What is the theme in A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr?

Truth and the judicial process are at the heart of this book. Truth and the judicial process can often be quite incompatible, and this was certainly evident in the saga of the Woburn case. The adversarial nature of a plaintiff and a defendant, by definition, creates a climate in which each litigant's legal counsel must out-maneuver his opponent, and, often, the verdict is a result of the success of trial tactics rather than the facts of the case. Jerome Facher is an expert in this regard. Realizing that the victims will arouse great sympathy from jurors, he successfully persuades Judge Skinner to divide the trial into phases.