A Civil Action

The legal system is ostensibly a tool for delivering justice. However, A Civil Action suggests that the fragility of the system is inescapable once one sees the machinations that comprise a case that goes to trial. There is no such thing as perfect justice. Rather, justice depends on the disposition of the plaintiff, the experience and temperament of the ruling judge, the histories and attention spans of the jurors and lawyers, and innumerable other factors. By the end of the case, there are aspects of the outcome that, though they may look like justice, have come about haphazardly or by accident. Moreover, regardless of the outcome, people define justice in different ways. A lawyer may feel that justice has been served after winning a case, while a grieving parent may not.

A Civil Action considers the ramifications of all these concerns. It presents the legal process as a bureaucratic chess match in which technicalities, strategies, and ways of shifting the jury’s focus count for more than the case’s facts or the human lives involved. For example, in Chapter 6 when Richard Aufiero is deposed by counsel from Grace and Beatrice, Facher tries to play up Aufiero’s questionable past and downplay the tragedy of his son’s story. Richard must answer any questions he is asked, which makes him nervous; 15 years earlier, Richard had an addiction to drugs. Once, during an argument with his wife, Lauren, he pushed her, resulting in a cut that had to be treated at a hospital. When Facher begins the questioning, he mentions the drug use but moves on quickly. He asks Richard about Jarrod’s death, including whether he knew that salmonella had been listed as the immediate cause of death and why there had been an autopsy. Richard says more than once that Jarrod died of leukemia and that it had been sudden. He’s angry and heartbroken, and he knows that the defense might use his history against him to distort the facts of the case.

What actually happens reveals a different weakness in the justice system. After listening to Richard, Facher is disturbed. Given the authenticity of Richard’s emotion, he feels this may not be a case he can win in front of a jury. He decides that his best chance is to make sure that plaintiffs never take the witness stand. This strategy of making the jury rule on the scientific and medical data before getting the chance to hear the plaintiffs’ personal stories is tactically sound, and it works: The overwhelmed jury rules in favor of Beatrice, even though it becomes clear later that some of the data was flawed. The question of whether it is a problem or simply a feature of the justice system that allows lawyers and judges to decenter the people who have suffered injustice is one A Civil Action poses but does not answer.