A settlement like the one Marshall Crane had carried to Lianna’s mother’s house works precisely because of when it arrives: at the rawest, most terrified moment of a grieving person’s life, when they are seven months pregnant and newly widowed and cannot see past the end of the week, let alone imagine a lawsuit stretching over years.

That is when the small check and the thick stack of waivers appear, accompanied by the gentle, reasonable, devastating warning that fighting would be hopeless and would leave the child with nothing.

The firm did not offer that settlement despite Lianna’s vulnerability.

It offered it because of her vulnerability, having calculated, correctly, that a frightened widow would sign almost anything to secure some small certainty for her unborn child.

The whole thing was engineered to convert her worst moment into her signature.