John Grisham - The Appeal

After such a long time finally there is another court novel by Grisham. Basically the story is about the town Bowmore, where people are warned to drink the local water. Where clean water is trucked in to replace the colored, stinky and obviously life threatening water. A town where cancer is almost in every family and where the cancer rate is 15% higher than the national average.

Wes and Mary Grace Payton are lawyers and so far, the only once that sued the Krane Chemical Corporation for 30 years of relieving cancer causing chemicals into Bowmores ground. They give everything, their live savings, their house, their office in those five years it took them to get a verdict.
So in the case Janet Barker vs. Krane Chemical Corp. the jury decides against Chemical Corp in all points:

Guilty for causing the death by Chad and Pete Barker, Janet's son and husband. Liability $500.000 for Chad and $2.500.000 for Pete.
Guilty for the intentional imposition of punitive damages. Liability $38.000.000

Of course there is an appeal and Carl Trudeau, millionaire and owner of the Krane Corp. hires a suspicious firm that promises to find a good candidate for the upcoming judicial elections to replace the most liberal Judge in Mississippi's Supreme Court. Until then a decision in Krane's case isn't expected anyway. Krane pays for these services and a young, clean, ambitious and most of all conservative lawyer is found in Ron Fisk, husband and father to three children. They build him up. They collect the money for his campaign. The money comes from the big business. Companies like Krane Chemical Corporation, churches and private people.
Ron speaks for families, about the death penalty and that sexual predators and killers aren't executed, he's pro gun possession and against gay marriage.
After what seems for Ron to be an easy campaign he is elected and takes his place in the Supreme Court. Mississippis Supreme Court holds 9 people. Five of them protect corporate wrongdoers by limiting their liability and verdicts are reversed one after another.

When it is time to decide about the Krane Corp. Appeal Ron experiences his own tragic family disaster after his son got hit by a baseball that leaves him with a fractured scull and likely permanent damage to the brain. He experienced how those people whose verdicts were reversed by him must have felt when their loved once got hurt or even died.

-

A long, depressing read that kept me thinking all the time. It isn't fast paced but there is no necessity to that. The mills of justice grind slowly. So the reader is dragged into the tragedy of Bowmore and corporate behavior and the inability to vouch for their liabilities. In a world of money there is no such thing like responsibility. There is only the question how to get out of the mess with the least damage.
It was shocking to even read about settlement plans for Bowmores aggrieved party where the loss or illness of a child is worth much less than adults because they have no record of earning power. That young fathers are worth more because of the loss of future wages. Negotiations about still alive people, how long each would live, how much they will suffer, likelihood of survival and death. It was distressing to read about that.

It is also distressing to read about the ways money is risen and used to mislead the voters. The whole process of half-truths, statements taken out of contexts just to make a point for the own campaign is disgusting.

Of course the book is based on fiction but it has a lot of truth and at times like these, where Americans are about to elect their new president, it is even more something each and very voter out there wholeheartedly should consider.

Rating:
Visit John Grisham.

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (January 29, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385515049
ISBN-13: 978-0385515047