Winning a landmark toxic-tort suit can bankrupt the winning lawyer

Evidence

Schlichtmann filed for bankruptcy. He had hoped to pay off his debts, but in the end he could not. He found himself unable to work on cases anymore. He decided to quit the practice of law and go to Hawaii. In the Chapter 7 papers filed in bankruptcy court in Boston, he listed his assets as fourteen dollars in a checking account, a fifty-dollar cassette radio, one hundred dollars in cash, and five hundred dollars’ worth of clothes. (The expensive suits, after all, were no longer new.) He owed his creditors $1,231,542, of which state and federal taxes accounted for almost two thirds. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 3144

Categorization

• CANDY: 14 in checking, 500 of clothes, $1.23 million owed — the itemized asset list is the detail that makes it land.
• SHARE: Send to anyone who follows contingency-fee litigation: the plaintiff’s lawyer ends up the defendant in bankruptcy court.