Contingency-fee windfalls can vanish entirely into funding the next case.

Evidence

Schlichtmann’s firm received 40 percent of the settlement. In the past, a payday of this sort would have been cause for celebration, dinner out for the entire staff at an expensive restaurant, bonuses all around, and a night of drinking and revelry. But there was no party that night. The entire fee would have to go directly to Gordon, who would use it to pay Woburn bills. The money would disappear as soon as it arrived. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 2085

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the sacrifice theme: the settlement isn’t wealth but an offering consumed by the litigation machine — ‘corpses’ of the firm’s finances.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The Fee That Never Arrives’ — how contingency-fee litigation turns every win into capital for the next unwinnable case, making plaintiff firms structurally insolvent.
• XREF: connects to: Contingency fees make personal injury the main exception to one-shotters avoiding litigation — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1114

Broader Connections

• Contingency fees make personal injury the main exception to one-shotters avoiding litigation #expands (0.95) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1114