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One Saturday morning in February 1972, an impoundment dam owned by the Pittston Coal Company burst, sending a 130 million gallon, 25 foot tidal wave of water, sludge, and debris crashing into southern West Virginia's Buffalo Creek hollow. It was one of the deadliest floods in U.S. history. 125 people were killed instantly, more than 1,000 were injured, and over 4,000 were suddenly homeless. Instead of accepting the small settlements offered by the coal company's insurance offices, a few hundred of the survivors banded together to sue. This is the story of their triumph over incredible odds and corporate irresponsibility, as told by Gerald M. Stern, who as a young lawyer and took on the case and won.
- Sales Rank: #65296 in Books
- Brand: Stern, Gerald M.
- Published on: 2008-05-06
- Released on: 2008-05-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .71" w x 5.16" l, .51 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
Review
"A straightforward, suspenseful, and completely absorbing tale that will leave you cheering at the end."—San Francisco Chronicle“Jerry Stern's classic work provides readers with tremendous insight into the causes of the disaster. . . . It is powerful, troubling, and uplifting.” —From the foreword by President Bill Clinton“A shocking, timely book.” —The New York Times Book Review“A fascinating tale of how investigative lawyers work, intermingled with sympathetic portraits of the survivors of the disaster.”—Chicago Tribune“Fascinating reading. . . . An inside look at a history-making case.”—The Boston Globe
About the Author
Gerald M. Stern is a Counselmen at Phillips & Cohen LLP, a practice is devoted exclusively to representing whistleblowers in qui tam lawsuits. He graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School before beginning his legal career in Washington.
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Your first great legal lesson
By Thuggernaut
This book is essentially required reading for most first-year law students. Whether your civil procedure professor assigns it in the first or second semester, you won't be able to avoid it. Luckily, it's cheap and mercifully short. The dry and self-righteous narrative (with a special foreward full of fire-and-brimstone against those nasty coal companies from President Clinton) won't entertain you, but it will certainly teach you a great lesson about the legal profession: no matter which party "prevails," the true winners are always the attorneys.
This review won't give away all the juicy details, but compare the final sum each plaintiff earned versus the original settlement offer from Pittston. Next, compare that figure to the final jackpot Arnold and Porter raked in when the dust settled. Was it really worth all the time, heartache, depositions, and physical exams for the people affected by the disaster? You be the judge. All we know now is that this book is still lining Gerald Stern's pockets nearly 40 years after dam broke at Buffalo Creek. Welcome to the legal world.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Amazing book
By Sophia Mills
I got this book and read it ahead of time for a political science class and I loved it! It's especially relevant to me and the class since I go to college in West Virginia. This book really opened by eyes to the recklessness of the WV coal industry and exposed the tragic consequences of having a state so heavily influenced by "big coal." Once I started this book I didn't want to put it down. I loved that Stern wrote very clearly while beautifully recounting the story of the disaster, and the legal battle that followed. I very much admire Mr. Stern and am frustrated to see that 30 years later, West Virginians and, therefore, West Virginia politicians have an almost religious attachment to the same industry which brought great harm to this state.
I definitely will recommend this book to everyone and I am so glad Mr. Stern decided to share this story.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Compelling story, powerfully told
By Jennie Coughlin
The book has two main aspects -- telling the survivors' story, which it does in beautiful, painful detail through their own words -- and telling how Stern fought a major corporation that flagrantly flouted the law in a state bought and paid for by that industry and won. Its does both well, without making either element feel shortchanged.
Buffalo Creek took place a few years before PTSD was coined as a description, but as Stern outlines the effects the disaster had on the survivors, it's clear that PTSD was the major effect of the disaster. It also was the biggest part of the legal battle, as Stern and his team fought to get the court and the mining company to recognize the mental suffering of the survivors. Stern compares it a few times to the effects on the survivors of the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Reading the survivors tell about that day, scene by scene, frame by frame, is painful. The imagery is vivid, and knowing they relive it every time they hear rain or try to go to sleep or do any number of other things most of us take for granted is mind-boggling.
The first time Stern shows a survivor telling his story, it is a man whose young son was swept from his arms during the flood as they were carried away from the rest of their family. Stern tells how at the time he was hearing this, his son was about the same age, and he tried to imagine what it would be like seeing that happen with his own child. That's a tricky needle to thread in telling a story -- to relate something to your own life in a way that makes a connection without supplanting the original person's story. Stern does it with grace, and if I hadn't already been hooked by the facts of the case, that section would have compelled me to finish the story.
The book is first-person, so it is impossible to separate story from storyteller. Stern comes across as somebody trying to do the right thing in the face of impossible odds. He fully admits that the legal team caught some breaks they could not have expected on, twists that make the story more compelling. Perhaps the moment that seemed most real to me -- beyond the line that first hooked me in the introduction -- was when the case is moving quickly toward trial. Stern is working on the trial brief, which he describes almost as writing a script for the trial. The legal teams on both sides also are discussing a settlement. Stern has a moment where he wishes the case could go to trial. Part of that is to tell the survivors' story, to make it impossible for another company to do what Pittston did in Buffalo Creek. But Stern also admits to wanting to be the Clarence Darrow of the story, to have a chance at the recognition that would come from trying the case. He's embarrassed by it, and knows even as he's writing that it's ego talking -- but we tend to do that in those situations. I know a lot of investigative journalists through IRE and NICAR. We're all driven by the story, the chance to uncover wrongdoing and shine a spotlight on problems. That doesn't mean we don't also occasionally think "Pulitzer. IRE Award. Etc." when working on a hot story. That moment, more than any other in the story, humanized Stern, at least for me.
The other part of the story that worked is how Stern details legal issues and wrangling over jurisdiction and other obscure topics in such as way as to be both understandable and engrossing. Courts coverage can be full of jargon, not to mention filled with so many details as to bore anybody. (If I never see the phrase "Alford plea" in a story in the editing queue again, it will be too soon.) Stern avoids both pitfalls, keeping the complexity of the legal issues surrounding the story engaging and understandable. You don't have to have covered courts or be a legal scholar to understand the legal questions at issue in this story, and that is a huge success of the book, especially since it's written by a lawyer.
Stern had the materials for a powerful story just in the facts of the case, but his voice throughout the book is what pulls it together. He is both conversational and educational, while knowing how to structure the telling of the tale to pull the reader along to the ending.
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