class action

Director: michael apted

Actor: gene hackman,mary elizabeth mastrantonio,colin friels,joanna merlin

Data Published: Fri Mar 15 1991

Genres: Drama,Thriller

Key Words: judicial,judiciary,judicial system,20th century studios,20th century fox

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101590/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_Action_(film)

Description: Class Action is a movie starring Gene Hackman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Colin Friels. An attorney representing a traumatized accident victim finds that his opponent is a very familiar defense attorney - his own daughter.

Plot: The story is about a lawsuit concerning injuries caused by a defective automobile. The suit takes on a personal dimension because the injured plaintiff's attorney, Jedediah Tucker Ward (Gene Hackman) discovers that the automobile manufacturer's attorney Maggie Ward (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) is his estranged daughter. Jedediah Ward is a liberal civil rights lawyer who has based his career on helping people avoid being taken for a ride by the rich and powerful; he's pursued principle at the expense of profit, though he has a bad habit of not following up on his clients after their cases are settled. Jed's daughter, Maggie, has had a bad relationship with her father ever since she discovered that he was cheating on her mother, Estelle (Joanna Merlin), and while she also has made a career in law, she has taken a very different professional route by working for a high-powered corporate law firm and has adopted a self-interested political agenda. Jed is hired to help field a lawsuit against a major auto manufacturer whose station wagons have a dangerous propensity to explode on impact while making a left turn, but while his research indicates he has an all but airtight case against them, the case becomes more complicated for him when he discovers that Maggie is representing the firm he's suing. The auto manufacturer in the film also utilizes a "bean-counting" approach to risk management, whereby the projections of actuaries for probable deaths and injured car-owners is weighed against the cost of re-tooling and re-manufacturing the car without the defect (exploding gas tanks) with the resulting decision to keep the car as-is to positively benefit short term profitability.