He had, in fact, counted on eliciting them to set up his confrontation with Riley. He produced what he liked to call his “killer document”—the 1956 report by state health agent A. C. Bolde, in which Bolde had ordered Riley to remove six hundred feet of tannery sludge from the edge of the Aberjona marsh. That report told, in black and white, how Riley had refused, claiming that he owned the land and could do what he wanted on it.

Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action, loc. 1750