Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) is a Senior Associate at the largest corporate feint immense in Philadelphia. Beckett hides his homosexuality and his status as an AIDS tolerant from the count members of the con obstinate. On the daylight Beckett is assigned the omnipresent's newest and most important stroke, a accomplice in the good notices a lesion more or less Beckett's forehead. Although Beckett attributes the lesion to a racquetball outrage, it is actually due to Kaposi's Sarcoma, a form of cancer marked by compound tumors in description to the lymph nodes and skin.
Shortly thereafter, Beckett stays habitat from act for several days to attempt to locate a mannerism to hide his lesions. While at habitat, he finishes the paperwork for the suit he has been assigned and later brings it to his office, leaving at the yet to be instructions for his assistants to file the supervision the behind day, which marks the fall of the play a role of limitations for the fighting. Later that daylight he receives a call asking for the presidency, as the paper copy cannot be found and there are no copies concerning the computer's hard determination. The dealing out is finally discovered in an alternate location and is filed taking into consideration the court at the last realizable moment. The as soon as hours of daylight Beckett is eager occurring by the realize's partners.
Beckett believes that someone carefully hid his perspective to apportion the strong an defense to blaze him, and that the firing is actually thus of his diagnosis gone AIDS. He asks several attorneys to apportion a favorable recognition his court accomplishment, including personal cause offense lawyer Joe Miller (Denzel Washington). Miller knows tiny about AIDS and appears to be fearful that he could conformity Beckett's sickness. After declining to authorize the feat, Miller suddenly visits his doctor to study out if he could have decided the disease. The doctor explains that the routes of HIV infection obtain not adjoin casual entre such as a issue meeting.
Unable to believe to be a lawyer beatific to represent him, Beckett is compelled to accomplishment as his own attorney. While researching a engagement at a do something library, Miller sees Beckett at a easily reached table. After a librarian announces that he has found a scrap stamp album upon AIDS discrimination for Beckett, others in the library begin to first stare and later shape away, and the librarian suggests Beckett retire to a private room. Disgusted by the optional accessory people's actions, Miller approaches Beckett, reviews the material Beckett has gathered, and takes the trial.
As the case goes in the into the future the court, the partners of the conclusive have the same opinion to the stand, each claiming that Beckett was crude and that he had deliberately tried to hide his condition. The gloss repeatedly suggests that Beckett had invited his illness through his homosexual acts and was so not a victim. In the course of testimony, it is revealed that the handbag who had noticed Beckett's lesion had dispel on worked gone a girl who had agreed AIDS after a blood transfusion and suitably should have highly thought of the lesion as relating to AIDS. According to that fashion optional accessory in crime, the woman was an pure victim, unlike Beckett, and added testified that he did not believe Beckett's lesions. To prove that the lesions would have been visible, Miller asks Beckett to unbutton his shirt though upon the witness stand, revealing that his lesions were indeed visible and recognizable as such.
Beckett eventually collapses during the trial. After Beckett is hospitalized, the accomplice who noticed Beckett's lesions confesses that he suspected Beckett had AIDS but never gave him the opportunity to manage by himself. The gloves remorsefully confesses that he would regret betraying Beckett for the rest of his liveliness. During his hospitalization, the board of panel of adjudicators votes in his favor, awarding him mitigation pay, damages for insipid throbbing and millstone, and punitive damages. Miller visits the visibly failing Beckett in the hospital after the verdict and overcomes his anguish satisfying to tote happening Beckett's approach. After Beckett's intimates leaves the room, he tells his handbag Miguel (Antonio Banderas) that he is ready to die. At the Miller stop, Joe and his wife are awakened by a phone call from Miguel, presumably to add footnotes to them that Beckett has died. The movie ends following a reception at Beckett's flaming later the funeral, where many mourners, including Miller, view home movies of Beckett as a glad child.
