This is the story of 52-year-old Langwith woman Pauline Evans who was sacked in 1997 but, despite winning her case for wrongful dismissal, has never seen a penny of the compensation.
"I have said 'let's just forget about it' but you can't," she said. "When you've been going on for nine years you can't let it go."
Pauline, of Portland Road, worked as a care assistant at the Oaklands Nursing Home in Langwith –– which catered for elderly residents with dementia — until she suffered a stroke in June 1997.
She was sacked on Christmas Eve that year and 12 months later an employment tribunal awarded her £2,000 compensation but, after a trip to the Court of Appeal, the amount was increased to £38,996 in May 2000.
And then her problems really began — to her horror, she discovered the nursing home had been sold.
"We came out of court and were gobsmacked because it was going to be another fight to get the money," she told Chad.
Documents from the tribunal show the firm Mrs Evans was taking action against, Oaklands Nursing Homes Group Ltd, no longer existed after the home was sold to another company.
The original firm did not attend the hearing and did not instruct any solicitors to represent them –– which meant Pauline faced another legal action if she wanted to see the money in her bank account.
"I can't see the fairness of it," she said. "We went through all those years, we won the case and we came out with debt."
Since 1997 the nursing home has been owned by five firms –– including one that went into receivership –– and various law firms have told Mrs Evans she could pursue the money through the courts.
But she was refused legal aid to fund the case leaving her stranded –– an increasingly common situation according to The Judiciary of England and Wales, which represents the nation's judges.
The Government is currently carrying out a consultation on the legal aid system and last month The Judiciary said civil legal aid had been 'scraped to the bone' by the cost of family and asylum seeker cases.
In 1995/96, the civil legal aid bill was £378m but this fell to £210m in 2004/05, while during the same period legal aid in family cases went from £373m to £452m and in asylum seeker cases it rose from £24m to £148m.
The Judiciary said: "The budget for civil legal aid has been eroded continuously over the years because of the uncontrolled and swelling demands of the criminal, family and asylum legal aid budgets."
Mrs Evans says that after taking out two loans against her home to win the compensation, she cannot afford around £6,000 it would take to pursue the matter through courts again.
Along with her husband Richard, Mrs Evans has spent the last six years fighting for the money she was awarded and the couple say they are angry at a legal system that denies them justice because they do not have the money.
"My father said to me years ago 'the law is a whore –– it is there for the highest bidder'," said Mr Evans.
But the pair have vowed to struggle on to secure the money that Mrs Evans says is rightfully hers.
"To think it's been going on since '97, it's a hell of a struggle," she added. "And we're still struggling now."