Boston

July 1986

Jan Schlichtmann is a Boston lawyer. While asleep on his condominium bed, he was dreaming
about a young woman who worked in the accounting department of a Boston insurance firm, she
was a juror. In his dream, he stood with her in a dense forest, overgrown with branches and roots
and vines. Behind the woman were several people whose faces he recognized, the other jurors.
The woman was trying to decide which path in the forest to take and he was attempting to point
the direction but the woman remained undecided, then the phone rang and awakened him.

An officer at Baybank South Shore called and told him that unless he was prepared to pay the
enormous amount due on his auto loan, they will repossess the car, a black Porsche 928. After a
few minutes the sheriff also called to repossess the car and was being persistent. He was waiting
for Schlichtmann at the front door, he handed him some documents dealing with the repossession.
He glanced at the papers and told the sheriff he would get the car, which was parked in a garage
three blocks away. He got the car in the garaged and drove it back to Pinckney Street and handed
the keys to the sheriff, who took out a screwdriver and began to remove the license plate. The
sheriff shook open a green plastic garbage bag and collected audio cassettes and papers from the
dashboard. The sheriff found some law books and several transcripts of depositions in the civil
action of Anne Anderson, et al., v. W. R. Grace & Co., et al. The transcripts made him curious. He
asked Schlichtmann if he is a lawyer and if he is involved in the case, he just nodded. He added
that the jury had been out for a week and felt certain they would reach a verdict on Monday. Before
leaving with the car the sheriff bid good luck to him. While seeing the car disappear he thought to
himself: Easy come, easy go.

Two days later, on Monday morning, Schlichtmann dressed in one of his favorite suits. He had no
money so he had to walk to the federal courthouse in downtown Boston. On his way across the
Boston Common a homeless man in grimy coat approached and asked for money, he told the man
he had none and came to think that in a technical sense he was close to being homeless himself.
His condominium association had just filed a lawsuit against him for failing to make rent and
association payments. All his money and the law firm’s money are funneled in the Anne Anderson
case. Credit card companies filed collection suits and threatened to repossess. By the time the jury
had started deliberating, after 78 days of trial, all the money was gone. The few dollars came into
the firm couldn’t keep up with the costs of the trial. If he lost this case, Schlichtmann would be
sunk so deeply into debt that it would take five years for him to climb back to even as Gordon
estimated

But money was the least of his worries. He was much more frightened of having staked too much
of himself on this one case. He was afraid that if he lost it—if he’d been that wrong—he would
lose something of far greater value than money. That in some mysterious way, all the confidence
he had in himself, his ambition and his talent, would drain away.

Schlichman finally arrived at the courthouse. Instead of entering the courtroom this time, he
preferred to wait at the corridor outside Judge Skinner’s courtroom. While waiting alone, the jurors
finally arrived as eight o’clock and as they proceeded in a small room at the end of the corridor to
conduct their deliberations, he observed each one of them.