Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta) is a successful lawyer who has started his own practice. Early legal victories have made him wealthy and one of Boston's most eligible bachelors. All of this begins to collapse after Jan begins activity on one of his firm's cases, a lawsuit on behalf of the parents of deceased children in a small industrial town against the companies they believe to have polluted their water. The pollutant in question is trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent, and it appears to have caused fatal cases of leukemia and cancer, as well as a wide variety of other health problems, among the citizens of the town.