The moment he turned down the very first settlement offer, and the other partners didn't prevent him from doing so, I facepalmed myself. If the partners, who hold equal equity at the firm, all decided it wasn't a financial responsible move, they should have prevented him from doing so. The fact that they sat back and let him do what he wanted just baffles me, unless law firms operate differently from logic and reason.
shareThis wasn't explained very well in the film, but in the book, there is a Harvard law professor who keeps telling them they could get tens of millions (I think even in the hundreds at one point) as a jury award. That's enough for them all to retire on. The film followed the book pretty closely, but they left that out (rightly, because it would have taken a lot of time to bring in the professor).
shareYeah, he turned down several of the offers (in the film version) without even consulting his partners. Thus, he cheated his partners and led them into bankruptcy. Early on, he could have got $25-$40M no problem, but he insanely asked for $320M. Later, when all was virtually lost and the firm teetered on bankruptcy, he turned down the offer for $20M. That was unfair and irresponsible to his partners.
shareHe turned down the 20m because he said he wouldn't make a deal without his partners being there. Which is completely fair.
shareLawyers don't accept or reject settlement offers. They can get disbarred for doing so. Only clients have the authority to accept, reject or make a settlement offer.
shareSo professor (or anyone else who has read the book) could you please clarify this for me.
Did the offer of $20 million from Facher to settle actually occur and if it did, was the offer taken to the clients and/or the firm.
Or did Jan (like a king as Facher decribes them as being) just reject it outright...which is what the movie infers occurred.
According to the real Jan Schlichtman, the part in the film where he was offered $20 million from Facher just a few minutes before Beatrice was dismissed from the case to settle never happened. Pure dramatic license. It is not mentioned in the book either. Even if it did, he would need to present the offer to his clients first anyway.
Not mentioned in either the movie or the book but in numerous articles is the fact that Grace and Beatrice were preparing to offer somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million but Schlichtman walked out on settlement talks before they could even present their offers (I don't know exactly how that went down).
Also, while Jan Schlichtman is portrayed as being very reckless and financially irresponsible in the film, that was also exaggerated for dramatic effect, though the real Schlichtman had a reputation for taking a lot of foolish and poorly calculated risks in earlier court cases (encouraging clients to turn down generous settlement offers in the interest of getting more money later on). However, those risks usually ended up paying off well and he was lucky. His luck clearly ran out on this case though.
But much of what you see in this film would likely result in a lawyer being sued for malpractice, sued by his law partners and/or sanctioned by the state bar. Schlichtman wasn't idiotic enough to let that happen, believe it or not.