Chapter 70 Section 20

In the 12th week of the trial, Bill Connolly won his malpractice case.According to the agreement, the law firm of Hilleman-Conway-Knolly received 40% of the $590,000 in damages.If the usual practice is followed, several young people should open champagne together, eat out, drink all night long, and then distribute red envelopes to everyone in the office.But this time, there was no celebration of any kind.Before the money he got had time to warm up, James Gordon used it to pay the bill without a penny left. On the morning of the fifty-fourth day of the trial, Wednesday, June 4, Gero Fischer began his defense of the Beeches Group."What is the substance of a casualty claim case? Or, what is the purpose of these lawyers who specialize in such cases? At the end of the day, one word, a naked word 'money,'" said Jero in his opening remarks. Money heals the wounded, money heals the sick, money even brings the dead back to life.”

There were only three witnesses in Gero, one of whom was Thomas Morningen, an engineer of the Woburn City Council who had lived next door to Toomey's house for 13 years.Many years ago, it was Mr. Morin who repeatedly assured the residents in the east of the city and his neighbors that there was absolutely no problem with the quality of the tap water, and wasn’t it just a little smell?Add something else to suppress the taste, or just boil it. In Jane Hilleman's view, Gero's intention to summon Thomas Morning was clear enough: If an expert like him could not be sure that the waste from the factory would pollute the local domestic water, Jack Riller How could a layman know?

But then Thomas Mourning's appearance in court became perhaps the most dramatic detail of the case.Thomas looked pale and emaciated on the witness stand, and Jane wondered if he was ill.During this period of time, Jane saw too many patients. Sure enough, a month later, Mr. Morin was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia, exactly the same as Toomey's son Pat.Less than six months later, Thomas Morning died of illness at the age of 49.At his funeral, the community forgave the engineer.It seems he didn't mean to deceive them, he was just downright ignorant. By the end of June, when the first half of the settlement was settled, Hilleman, Conway, and Knolly had spent $2.4 million on the Woburn case.What worried Jameson Gordon even more was that since the Woburn case started, all the lawyers in the firm had devoted themselves to it, and none of them had time to take on other cases.That said, at least not in the near term.

In the United States, for customers with good credit or high income, there are always many credit card companies sending you cards, hoping that you can owe them a lot of usury in the midst of unrestrained consumption.When James received these cards before, he would cut them in half with scissors and throw them into the trash can.I don't know when, about half a year ago, James started collecting credit cards. "Just in case," he said self-deprecatingly to himself.Now, when it really came time for "contingency needs", Zhan Meng took these cards all over the world for credit.This is how the salaries of the secretary and cleaner were paid on credit last month.

The Bank of Boston owed over a million dollars in loans.Although several people's house deeds, car deeds, life insurance, etc. were used as collateral, Uncle Bitter still felt uneasy.He feared that one day, when the snowballing of interest would bring the total amount of the debt close to the value of all these collaterals, he would have to play the role of dun and forcibly dispossess several young men of their property. Here came Jamon Gordon again, sitting morosely across from Uncle Beet's desk. "I really can't give you any more loans." When Uncle Bit resignedly repeated this sentence for the third time, he saw Zhan Meng put his hand into his bulging coat pocket. "You didn't bring a gun, did you?" Uncle Pitt bowed.He was really nervous.Having worked in the bank for most of his life, he has seen many people who are cornered by debts.

Zhan Meng slowly pulled out his hand, it was a handful of gold coins, a handful of shiny gold coins!James put the gold coins on the table, and stacked them neatly one by one. "That's all I have left," James said wearily, "You can give it to me." On the 61st day, Mike Ketton appeared in court on behalf of W. R. Glass Company.Mike said in his opening remarks: "It's true, the workers in the food machinery factory did pour some chemical solvents on the ground. Why did they do this? Anyone with a little knowledge of chemistry knows that these solvents are extremely strong. Volatility. They poured these solvents on the ground to make them volatilize, and they did volatilize a lot. It is true that the soil and groundwater under the food machinery factory have been polluted by TCE since the early 1960s, but this It doesn’t mean that the same TCE polluted two wells.” The defense attorney said he would prove to the jury that it was the Apodrone River that was polluted by another upstream plant, not W.R. Glass groundwater, polluting the water supply system in the east of the city.

Also among Mike's witnesses was a groundwater expert, Jon Gashiva, who not only knew Professor George Pindel but "has a lot of respect, both personally and professionally. But I couldn't help but Pointing out," Jon changed the subject, "Professor Pinder's theory about the Apodrone River is wrong. When the two wells were pumped, the Apodrone River water was also pumped into it. And this means that the two wells were polluted s reason". However, the first thing Jon Gashiva wants to prove is that W. R. Glass's groundwater did not flow into wells G and H.Jon's graduate thesis was on glaciers, and he said that more than 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age in geological history, a mile-thick mass of land covered what is now the northeastern United States. ice.Due to the heavy pressure of this huge ice over the years, the underlying soil layer has formed a hard soil called moraine in geology, also known as ground rock. W. R. Glass's food machinery factory was built on such a rock.Because of the density of the soil, groundwater moves very slowly through the formation, as if passing water through a pipe completely clogged with scale.This was confirmed by Jon's calculations using a computer simulation program. "So," he told the court, "even if the groundwater had been polluted on the day the Food Machinery Factory opened in 1960, it would not have flowed to Wells G and H until May 1979."