Voltaire “I was ruined but twice – once when I lost a law suit, and once when I won.”
Samuel Butler “In law, nothing is certain but the expense.”
In December 2012, Stephen Fry’s QI series claimed that Dickens’ Jarndyce v Jarndyce was based on the case of William Jennens from Acton, Suffolk and known as the Acton Miser. Jennens v Jennens commenced in 1798 and was abandoned in 1915 (117 years later) when the legal fees had exhausted the Jennens estate of funds. The case had been running for 55 years when Bleak House was published.