Jan Schlichtmann
| Jan Schlichtmann | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 16, 1951 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
University of Massachusetts Amherst (B.A.) Cornell Law School (J.D.) |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
| Years active | 1977–present |
| Known for | Anderson v. Cryovac, Inc., subject of A Civil Action |
Jan Richard Schlichtmann (born March 16, 1951) is an American attorney specializing in personal injury law and toxic torts. He was educated at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, B.A., and Cornell University, J.D., and was admitted to the bar in 1977.
Attorney Schlichtmann became famous in the 1980s as a result of his lawsuit against W. R. Grace and Beatrice Co. (Anderson v. Cryovac) alleging that chemicals from these companies had contaminated drinking water in a town north of Boston, Woburn, Massachusetts. The plaintiffs claimed that extensive tests by Schlichtmann's experts and the Harvard School of Public Health showed that defendants W. R. Grace and Beatrice Co. had polluted Woburn's water with dangerous levels of various carcinogenic chemicals.
The contamination is alleged to have resulted in the deaths of children from leukemia. This civil action case, often referred to as "Woburn," was chronicled in the 1995 book A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr, which in turn was made into a film starring John Travolta as Schlichtmann.
More recently Schlichtmann was co-counsel with environmental attorney Mark Cuker of Philadelphia in a successful lawsuit on behalf of 68 families from Toms River New Jersey whose children developed cancer as a result of exposure to carcinogenic chemicals in the air and water there from two federal Superfund clean-up sites of toxins produced by Union Carbide and Ciba-Geigy chronicled in the 2013 book Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by environmental journalist Dan Fagin.
...
Wikipedia