A Civil Action - Movie
A Civil Action
The movie A Civil Action is focused on describing and explaining what really goes on in a court of law. The case the movie deals with is a small firm going after a national corporation in order to get them to apologize for what they did to the city’s water. It is believed that the company would dump harmful waste such as trichloroethylene into the back of their site where the company was located into a small running river. However, the river was connected to the city’s water wells and caused harm to many children that drank the water. The way each lawsuit is handled can be related to a sociological perspective. The Marxist approach can best explain the process and outcome of the case in A Civil Action.
Section 1: Karl Marx sided with three principles regarding law and how it relates to the upper and lower classes in society. They are: law is a product of evolving economic forces; law is a tool used by the ruling class to maintain its power over the lower class and the means of production are owned by the ruling class. Marx believed that law is a structure of power. In this case the victims of families were the working class and the powerful corporations such as Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace and Company are the ruling class. These two companies own their means of production meaning they do not need resources from others in order to keep their businesses running smoothly. Facher and Cheeseman, the defendants of the case, knew that the opposing side was not set financially. This gave them the opportunity to draw out the case as long as possible while Schlichtmann’s firm would be struggling to get by financially day by day. Not only to the defendants control the means of production but also they had professionals to clean up the “dirty” work that could possibly cause harm to others. This way it is even more difficult to find flaws in the company and reveal their mistakes. However this case does relate to a Marxist approach when
The movie A Civil Action is focused on describing and explaining what really goes on in a court of law. The case the movie deals with is a small firm going after a national corporation in order to get them to apologize for what they did to the city’s water. It is believed that the company would dump harmful waste such as trichloroethylene into the back of their site where the company was located into a small running river. However, the river was connected to the city’s water wells and caused harm to many children that drank the water. The way each lawsuit is handled can be related to a sociological perspective. The Marxist approach can best explain the process and outcome of the case in A Civil Action.
Section 1: Karl Marx sided with three principles regarding law and how it relates to the upper and lower classes in society. They are: law is a product of evolving economic forces; law is a tool used by the ruling class to maintain its power over the lower class and the means of production are owned by the ruling class. Marx believed that law is a structure of power. In this case the victims of families were the working class and the powerful corporations such as Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace and Company are the ruling class. These two companies own their means of production meaning they do not need resources from others in order to keep their businesses running smoothly. Facher and Cheeseman, the defendants of the case, knew that the opposing side was not set financially. This gave them the opportunity to draw out the case as long as possible while Schlichtmann’s firm would be struggling to get by financially day by day. Not only to the defendants control the means of production but also they had professionals to clean up the “dirty” work that could possibly cause harm to others. This way it is even more difficult to find flaws in the company and reveal their mistakes. However this case does relate to a Marxist approach when