In Wooburn, the water's tasted strangely for years, but no one thought much of it till children in specific areas of Wooburn started dropping like flies left and right of a rare type of leukemia only found in very rare instances, so one of the parents having lost a son to the tragedy, Anne Anderson, collects a team of victims, and sues the two largest suspects in the town, two factories, one producing chemicals, the other being a tannery, and they struggle to get a lawyer for the case till personal injury lawyer Jan Schlichtman realizes that the tannery is owned by Beatrice foods, and the chemical plant is owned by WR Grace, both huge money corporations capable of paying huge sums of money if found guilty, and takes it, refusing to settle at the expense of his fellow plaintiffs. Jan doesn't succeed in holding either company accountable, and ends up sacrificing his entire law firm in the process, but he eventually finds the key to the case, and surrenders the case to a government environmentalist group which takes the case and holds WR Grace responsible for all damages.