“A Civil Action” quotes
(1998)
Title A Civil Action
Year 1998
Director Steven Zaillian
Genre Drama
Year 1998
Director Steven Zaillian
Genre Drama
Plot – Jan Schlichtmann is a successful lawyer, specialized in personal injury cases. He's a man who boasts about every cases he wins and about his Porsche. His life changes when he defends eight families of Woburn, Massachusetts, who have lost their children due to leukemia. Most of his colleagues wouldn't have accepted such a case but Jan decides to get involved.
All actors – John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Tony Shalhoub, William H. Macy, Zeljko Ivanek, Bruce Norris, John Lithgow, Kathleen Quinlan, Peter Jacobson, Mary Mara, James Gandolfini, Stephen Fry
show all“A Civil Action” Quotes 14 quotes
“Trials are a corruption of the entire process and only fools who have something to prove end up ensnared in them. Now when I say prove, I don't mean about the case, I mean about themselves.”
“Lawsuits are war, it's as simple as that ad they begin the same way the declaration: the compliant, when you're a small firm and their a big one steep in history and wealth as they always are, with their Persian carpets on the floor and their Harvard diplomas hanging on the wall, it's easy to be intimidated, don't be, that's what they want,...” (continue)(continue reading)
Personal injury law has a bad reputation. They call us "ambulance chasers", "bottom feeders", "vultures that prey on the misfortunes of others", if that's true, why do I lay awake at nights worrying about my clients why does their pain become my pain? I wish I could find some way not to empathize, it'd be a lot easier.
“- James Gordon: Every dollar is a dollar we don't have, we're floating on credit, without a net.
- Jan Schlichtmann: Mortgaged my house, I don't care.
- James Gordon: I have, and Kevin's, and Bill's and mine, and I've cashed in our retirement plan, and our life insurance policies, it's gone.”“The odds of a plaintiff's lawyer winning in civil court are two to one against. Think about that for a second. Your odds of surviving a game of Russian roulette are better than winning a case at trial. 12 times better. So why does anyone do it? They don't. They settle. Out of the 780,000, only 12,000 or 11/2 percent ever reach a verdict. The...” (continue)(continue reading)
“When was the last time you lost betting on me? Never. I'm probably the best investment your bank ever made.”
A plaintiff's case depends on momentum the few objections he gets the better the case will go so whenever you can you should object, irrelevance: objection hearsay: objection best evidence: objection authenticity: objection if you should fall asleep at the counsel chair the first thing you say when you wake up should be "objection".
“The idea of criminal court is crime and punishment. The idea of civil court and of personal injury law by nature, although no one likes to say it out loud, least of all the personal injury lawyer himself is money. Money for suffering and money for death as if that could somehow relieve suffering, as if somehow it can bring dead children back to...” (continue)(continue reading)
“- Jerome Facher: What's your take?
- Jan Schlichtmann: They'll see the truth.
- Jerome Facher: The truth? I thought we were talking about a court of law. Come on, you've been around long enough to know that a courtroom isn't a place to look for the truth.”“It's like this. A dead plaintiff is rarely worth as much as a living, severely-maimed plaintiff. However, if it's a long slow agonizing death, as opposed to a quick drowning or car wreck, the value can rise considerably. A dead adult in his 20s is generally worth less than one who is middle aged. A dead woman less than a dead man. A single adult...” (continue)(continue reading)
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