In 1958, a disastrous fire at Chicago's Our Lady of the Angels grammar school took the lives of 92 pupils, injured 76 others, and left scores of parents with clear grounds for suing the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Chicago. Understandably, the parents were loath to go to court against their own hierarchy. But in 1959, on behalf of five injured children, Chicago Lawyer Burton Joseph filed a $1,750,000 damage suit charging that the archdiocese let the school become "a dangerous firetrap." After that, more and more plaintiffs upped the ante to $9,000,000.
Early this summer, when the suits finally headed...
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