Anderson V. WR Grace case study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Anderson V. WR Grace - Case Study Example According to the plaintiffs, their chemicals led to sever health effects on their families and eventual death. Notably children from seven of the plaintiffs’ families contracted leukemia and died following complications from these chemicals. Additionally, a spouse of one of the plaintiffs contracted a severe myelocytic leukemia and died out of the same illness (Gerrard and Foster 657). Despite the laboratory findings in the water samples from these wells, claims of the plaintiffs that the contaminated water causes leukemia led to numerous questions: how did TCE got into the wells? Who could have been responsible? Could TCE (chemical analyzed from wells’ water) cause leukemia in children? On the other hand, were the wells supplying drinking water to the East Woburn neighborhood carried leukemia dusts? The findings revealed that dumpsites were too close to the drinking wells. Moreover, some of the chemicals used by these industries were found in the wells’ water. Thus, the chemicals caused severe health problems and eventual death to some of the plaintiffs’ families (Gerrard and Foster 654). However, the chemicals could not be blamed for the cause of leukemia. From the findings, someone was to take the responsibility of damages realized. Therefore, W.R. Grace and plaintiffs were left to settle approximately eight million US dollars despite the company denial of and wrongdoing or responsibility for the damages. Gerrard, Michael, and Sheila R. Foster.  The Law of Environmental Justice: Theories and Procedures to Address Disproportionate Risks. Chicago, Ill: American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources, 2008.

A Communist Manifesto and Social Movements Essay

A Communist Manifesto and Social Movements - Essay Example Generally speaking, Marx set forth a theory in which conflict, or class struggle, was both caused and perpetuated by a division of individuals into a bourgeois group and a proletarian group. The bourgeois controlled the means of production in a capitalist system and the proletariat functioned as labor for wages. In this way, still speaking generally, the bourgeois were in possession of wealth and resources and the proletariat, wages aside were largely powerless and dispossessed. Marx refined this general model by characterizing a variety of social and economic relationships according to this framework; indeed, attempting to emphasize the pervasive nature of this bourgeoise-proletariat divide, he stated that, Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes (Marx, 1848: np). Thus, Marx viewed the social forces driving societies towards a proletarian revolution as being essentially twofold. ... an initial matter, from a historical point of view, Marx did credit the bourgeois with aiding in the downfall of the old feudal classes; on the other hand, he characterized this development as predictable and as a temporary ascension to power.