Judge Walter Skinner, 77; oversaw Woburn-Grace case

Walter Jay Skinner was a federal district court judge best known for presiding over the 1986 Woburn water contamination case portrayed in the book and movie ''A Civil Action." But the movie, many believed, did not do justice to the man.

Played by John Lithgow, the 77-year-old jurist, who died Sunday in the Rivercrest-Deaconess long-term care facility in Concord, comes across in the film as a corporate flunky.

Nothing could have been further from the truth, according to those who knew him.

''He was a great judge, calm and dispassionate," said retired Massachusetts Appeals Court judge Gerald Gillerman, a friend.

Judge Skinner did not take the film personally.

''When I asked him about it, he responded simply, 'It goes with the territory,' " Gillerman said.

Judge Skinner was born in Washington and grew up in Providence. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and entered private practice in 1952.

From 1957 to 1963, he was town counsel of Scituate and an assistant district attorney in Plymouth County. From 1963 to 1966, he was an assistant attorney general under Edward W. Brooke, who described him as a ''workhorse and an able scholar" when he was nominated for an opening on the federal bench in 1973.

As head of the attorney general's criminal division, Judge Skinner prosecuted four members of the Governor's Council charged with requesting bribes in connection with their confirmation of an appointee.

The case came back to haunt him in 1969, when he was nominated for a state Superior Court opening by former governor Francis W. Sargent. Councilor Patrick J. ''Sonny" McDonough, remembering that Judge Skinner had gone after his former colleagues, blocked the nomination.

A longtime resident of Newton, Judge Skinner moved to Concord in 1996.

After he was appointed to the federal bench in 1974, Judge Skinner quickly rolled up his sleeves and began to eliminate a backlog at the court by opening his session an hour early each morning, at 9 a.m.

When he and his staff brought the backlog under control, he hung a ''gone fishing " sign on his office, chartered a boat, and took his staff fishing on Boston Harbor.

''He was an unpretentious man who was the same whether he had the robe on or off," said his longtime clerk, Phil Lyons of Revere.

Judge Skinner may be best known for overseeing the federal case in which plants owned by W. R. Grace and Beatrice Foods were alleged to have contaminated the public water supply in Woburn, the story chronicled in ''A Civil Action." But he also handled a 1974 suit brought by the Wampanoags of Mashpee to recover extensive acreage on Cape Cod. And he resolved cases concerning the overcrowding of Norfolk and Essex county jails and the disbursement of monies for public housing.

The elevator at the old courthouse in Post Office Square often broke down between floors, so Judge Skinner began walking up the stairs to his court on the 15th floor.

''At first I did it because of the elevator, but then I got used to it," Judge Skinner said in a story published in the Globe in 1989. ''It doesn't take that long if you count the time it would take to wait for the elevator."

His patience with the elevator famously broke down in 1986, when Joseph Silvano was late for his sentencing on tax evasion charges, because he was stuck in the elevator between floors. Judge Skinner called in the press and threatened to sentence Silvano to time served in the elevator. The story was published across the country, though little note was made that Judge Skinner eventually sentenced Silvano to several months in prison.

''He was a tough old Yankee, but he was also one of the funniest I ever met," said his former law clerk Richard G. Pichette of Belmont.

Judge Skinner once presided over the case of several men charged in an armored car heist. One of the defendants chose to serve as his own counsel. At the end of the case, lawyers for the defendants stood up and filed several motions. When the judge asked if there was anything else, the defendant who served as his own attorney said, ''Yeah. Kiss my ass."

''Motion denied," Judge Skinner said without a moment's hesitation.

After stepping down from the bench in 1993, Judge Skinner did mediation work for several years. He also devoted himself to painting and executed the portrait of Judge Charles M. Wyzanski that hangs in the federal courthouse in Boston.

Judge Skinner leaves his wife, Sylvia (Henderson); a daughter, Sarah of Salem; three sons, Stephen of Montclair, N.J., Jonathan of Hanover, N.H., and Thomas of Gloucester; and five grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held May 19 at 2 p.m. in Trinitarian Congregational Church in Concord. Burial, in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, will be private.