Valley So Low

A riveting courtroom drama about the victims of one of the largestenvironmental disasters in U.S. historyand the country lawyer determined to challengethe notion that, in America, justice can be bought

For more than 50 years, a power plant in the small town of Kingston, Tennessee,burned fourteen thousand tons of coal a day, gradually creating a mountain of ashen waste 60 feet high and covering 84 acres, contained only by an earthen embankment. In 2008, just before Christmas, that embankment broke, unleashing a lethal wave of coal sludge that covered 300 acres, damaged nearly 30 homes, and precipitating a cleanup effort that would cost more than $1 billionand the lives of more than 50 cleanup workers who inhaled the toxins it released.

Jim Scott, a local personal-injury lawyer, agreed to represent theworkers after they began to fall ill. That meant doing legal battle againstthe Tennessee Valley Authority,a colossal, federally owned power company that had once been a famous cornerstone of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Scott and his hastily assembled team gathered extensive evidence of malfeasance: threats against workers; retaliatory firings; disregarded safety precautions; andtest results, either hidden or altered, that would have revealed harmful concentrations of arsenic, lead, and radioactive materials at the cleanup site. At every stage, Scottoutmanned and nearly brokehad to overcome legal hurdles constructed by TVA and the firm it hired to help execute the cleanup. He grew especially close to one of the victims, whose swift decline only intensified his hunger for justice. As the incriminating evidence mounted, the workers seemed to have everything on their side, including the truthand yet, was it all enough to prevail?

The lawsuit that Scott pursued on the workers' behalf was about their illnesses, no doubt. But it was also about whether blue-collar employees could beat the C-suite; if self-described "hillbilly lawyers" could beat elite corporate defense attorneys; and whether strong evidence could beat fat pocketbooks. With suspense and rich detail, Jared Sullivan's thrilling account lays bare the casual brutality of the American justice system, and calls into question whetherand howthe federal government has failed its people.

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