Charles Dickens published Bleak House in monthly parts from March 1852 to September 1853. At its center is the lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which “still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.”
The case ends only when the money is gone. Near the end of the novel, Allan Woodcourt asks the lawyer Mr. Kenge: “Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in costs?” Kenge answers: “Hem! I believe so.”