This synopsis contains no spoilers, in the same way that real life stories reported widely in the news contain no spoilers, only smoking guns. The plot of "A Civil Action" is based on a true story of the successful personal injury "ambulance chaser" [Characters' words] lawyer, otherwise unfulfilled, secretly hoping for that one big case. The case he gets is unexpected and did cost him his livelihood, but apparently (as the entire movies' main action points are transferred between each other by the main characters' own narration) imbued him with a better outlook on what it means to be "successful". The characters names are not changed, also because it is a true story. At the very end of the movie (yes, there is a spoiler one could say) that involves a potential appeal in the Supreme Court - again, true as revealed in the pre-credit roll often seen in true-story films, such as "Erin Brockovich".The "big case" is that recorded 1981 of the People of Mass. vs. W. R. Grace and Beatrice Foods, who had been dumping a cancer-causing industrial solvent into the water table of Woburn, Massachusetts for many years - more than a decade. Beatrice Foods was the parent company of W.R. Grace, a Long Grove, IL. based chemical invention company, known for mixing chemicals experimentally, as was their charge.
What was the lawyer secretly hoping for?
One big case