In April 1989, Sondra Locke filed a $70 million palimony lawsuit against Clint, after he changed the locks on their Bel-Air home and moved her possessions into storage while she was at work on the Impulse (1990) set. The relationship had been on the rocks for months, with Clint leaving nonverbal hints that he wanted Sondra to get out of his life voluntarily (once, while she was still in the shower, he left to go to a party to which they'd both been invited), but they weren't officially broken up. During the 15 days between the lockout and Sondra filing suit, she tried to resolve things quietly, but Clint offered her nothing and would only communicate via lawyers. (To Sondra, an equal division of assets was principle rather than greed. She had actually saved up $3 million over the course of her 14-year relationship with Clint because he was paying all their expenses.) Clint refused to say Sondra's name out loud at his depositions, reducing her to pronouns or alternately referring to her as "the person." He also never made eye contact or any reference to her proximity in the courtroom. Sondra said the stress of the ordeal induced breast cancer, requiring mastectomies. In November 1990, 19 months into proceedings, she arranged to meet with Clint in private and achieved an immediate settlement. Sondra received $450,000 lump sum plus monthly support payments, title to a house in West Hollywood that Clint had been leasing to her lawful wedded but openly gay husband Gordon Anderson, and a $1.5 million multi-year contract with Warner Bros. to develop and direct films. By the end of 1993, however, the studio had yet to provide Sondra with a single directorial assignment and had rejected over 30 projects that she submitted. Sondra became convinced that the deal was a sham and that she was employed only on paper. "I was stunned and outraged at how I had been tricked and cheated" she said. (Her attorney, Peggy Garrity, would later claim Clint held out the Warner deal like a "dangled carrot" to get her to drop the palimony suit.) Sondra sued Clint again for fraud in June 1995, having unearthed a bookkeeping printout to corroborate the charge. She asserted that the money WB pretended they were paying her came from Clint's own pocket and had been laundered through the operating budget for Unforgiven (1992). The case went to trial in September 1996; one juror disclosed that the panel agreed to find for Sondra by a 10-to-2 vote (nine votes are needed for a verdict) and were only debating the amount. Clint's legal team convinced him to settle at the eleventh hour, and on the morning jurors were set to begin a second day of deliberation, Sondra announced her decision to drop her suit against Clint in return for an unspecified monetary reward. As Clint walked down the courthouse steps, he told a bank of cameras, "What does this say to young women across the country who work very hard for a living?" (A nonsensical remark, since the case he had just lost was all about work--work he had obstructed his ex-soulmate from doing.) Sondra then brought a separate action against Warner Brothers, seeking $100 million in damages for conspiring with Clint to ruin her career. It was settled out of court in May 1999, ending the decade-long legal saga. While she was bound by confidentiality not to reveal the amount, Locke wasn't shy about disclosing her feelings. "I feel elated. This has been the best day in a long, long time" she told reporters.