Chapter 68 Section 18

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," began Jane, looking up at the windows behind the jury box, "there is a small town north of Boston. The name of this small town is Warburn. Warburn Well, like so many other towns, it has houses, it has schools, it has churches, it has factories. But Woburn has one more thing, an unusually high incidence of various diseases." Jane left the speeches in the dock, he didn't need them.Also on the plaintiffs table were Kevin Conway, Bill Connolly, Professor Charles Naxon and Tom Kelly.Tom has his own law firm, but when Jane needs it, he also finds time to help out.

Jane spoke eloquently.He described the eight families in Woburn and what happened to them, the Beeches Group and W.R. Spilled on the ground or poured into ditches, the waste solution seeped through the groundwater into two wells in the Woburn water supply system, and then into the water pipes of residents in the east of the city. "These big companies, they know what they're doing, they know what they're doing is hurting other people, and yet they're doing it." There was silence in the courtroom when Jane finished.It was a long time before Judge Walter Skinner called a ten-minute break.

Jane Hilleman calculated on his fingers that he would need about four or five weeks to call all three dozen witnesses from the "water system" stage on the plaintiff's side.But his key witnesses, also called "star witnesses," were only two: geologist Dr. John Zubinski and Princeton University professor and hydrologist George Pindel. W. R. Glass's Food Machinery Works was easier to manage, and Ole Lavie, Thomas Barbus, etc. were all willing to appear in court.As for the J. J. Riller Tannery of the Beeches Group, it may have to rely on circumstantial evidence. The first person on the witness stand was Dr. John Zobinski.In the past year or so, Dr. Zobinski led his geological team to drill more than 20 test wells in the jurisdiction of W. R. Glass and J. J. Riller Tannery, and analyzed hundreds of soil samples.On the 15-hectare open space of the tannery, they dug out 55-gallon rusty iron drums from the ground, and collected soil saturated with chemical waste liquid such as TCE. The sample number of these soils is Z, so it is also called Z sample.They also unearthed a 1963 Warburn election proclamation, a 1967 pill bottle from a hospital, and a 1970 Budweiser can.Based on these findings, and several aerial images of Woburn taken from the 1950s and 1960s - clearly showing piles of leather scraps and rusted iron barrels on a 15-hectare clearing - the scientist believes that , he has every reason to believe that the land has been polluted for at least 25 years.

According to Dr. Zobinski's and Jane's rehearsal beforehand, his court appearance should have taken about three days, but it turned out that it took almost two weeks because Jero Fischer kept interrupting Zobins with protests. Dr. Key's testimony.Gero once said to the students in his Harvard class: "When you present a case in court, what is the most important thing? It is completeness, smoothness, and coherence. To destroy this integrity, this This fluidity, this coherence, is the protest, or dissent, of the other party." Now, Gero is playing the role of that saboteur.For example, when Dr. Zobinski showed the jury a photograph of a sample Z held in his hands, Gero stood up and protested, "It's too big."

"Of course," said Justice Skinner, "if you want to make the presentation clear for every juror, you should of course zoom in on the photo. That's normal." "I mean, it's disfigured. Look at this hand, it's bigger than a tennis racket." "If you mean to say that no one else has hands that big, you're certainly right." Jero also disputed the results of Dr.'s soil sample analysis, the state Department of the Environment's report and other circumstantial material, saying they had no connection to the case. Dr. Zobinski produced another photo of a tannery dump.

"I protest," Gero said, "that the photo is fake and the scraps on it are fake." "Really?" Jane turned to Jero. "Absolutely." "Have you forgotten? Here's your photo, taken by your engineer. You think your engineer 'artificially faked' this piece of crap?" The defense's cross-examination of Dr. Zobinski took another two weeks, and then it went relatively smoothly. Jane summoned several residents of Woburn, who had seen with their own eyes the piles of animal waste and dozens of animals loaded with chemicals on the 15 hectares between the tannery and the Apojona River from the late 1950s to the 1970s. Solvent drums.They also said that the 15-hectare open space was originally called Wild Forest, but since the 1950s, there has not been a single tree there, and there is no grass, not even insects and ants, so people renamed it Death Valley.But Mr. Riller was not happy, and later simply called "15 hectares".

On the afternoon of April 19, the last day of the fourth week, Jack Riller, owner of J. J. Riller Tannery, took the witness stand.Jane produced in court a report dated July 12, 1956, by A.C. Boulder, a state sanitation engineer.Jane later said that he didn't actually expect Mr. Riller to admit all this, he just wanted to catch him off guard and preferably irritate him.But Jack Riller was very composed, and he shook his head and said, "No, sir, I've never met any Boulder engineer or been on 15 hectares with anyone from the State Department of Health." Minutes before the adjournment, Jane asked about J. J. Riller Tannery's bookkeeping records: "Mr. Riller, you don't have any records in your factory about the chemicals you used in the 60's and 70's. documented, is it?"

"No," Jack replied, "it's all in my head."