The case has dragged on for many generations before the action of the novel, so that, by the end of the narrative when the correct heirs appear to have finally been established, legal costs have devoured the whole estate, rendering any ultimate verdict moot.
Dickens used it to attack the chancery court system as being almost completely worthless, as any "honourable man among its practitioners" says, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!"
Richard Carstone, a former ward of court, dies trying to win the inheritance for himself after spending much of his life so distracted by the notion of it that he cannot commit to any other pursuit.
John Jarndyce, by contrast, finds the whole process tiresome and tries to have as little to do with it as he possibly can, one of many examples of the character's wise and self-effacing demeanour.
The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises.
Our suspense was short; for a break up soon took place in the crowd, and the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot, and bringing a quantity of bad air with them.
We stood aside, watching for any countenance we knew; and presently great bundles of paper began to be carried out—bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes, which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being, anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more.
There is another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs.Based on an 1853 letter of Dickens,[1] the first of these cases has been identified[2][3] as the dispute over the will of Charles Day, a boot blacking manufacturer who died in 1836.
When he died in 1776, the estate was tied up, and his daughter-in-law Charlotte Smith was pushed by financial necessity to write for money; she became a much-praised poet.
[7] Others have cited the case of Thellusson v Woodford as the real-life basis but though it related to the will of a man who died in 1797 the suit was not actually filed until after the book was published.
[citation needed] The will of Sir George Downing, who stipulated that his fortune be used to build for a new college at Cambridge, resulted in a lawsuit which lasted for more than 40 years, until March 1800.
The length of the case is made humorous by the fact that Orlando, a party to the lawsuit, remains alive for its entire duration.
The case is mentioned in David Graeber's 2018 book Bullshit Jobs as a paradigm of long-lasting court disputes which bespeak the self-serving desire of problem-solving professionals (not only lawyers but also independent auditors and financial advisers) to prolong and multiply otherwise solvable problems as a way to preserve their jobs.
According to Graeber, "the result was an entire new industry organized around resolving PPI claims," leading banks to enter into contracts with professionals and firms intent on making sure the problem was never actually solved, because they eyed the "vast sums set aside by the bank to pay compensation for the PPI".