Single Jeopardy

by Gene Grossman

  Lawyers don’t have the same luxury that doctors enjoy. When you’re an MD on call in an emergency room and they wheel in two patients on gurneys, each one suffering gunshot wounds, the doctor doesn’t have time to stop and inquire which one of them is the good guy. He just does his job and tries to save both of their lives. I don’t remember ever seeing someone protesting about a doctor who saved some bad guy’s life by performing an emergency procedure. To the contrary, it seems like the public would rather that the accused’s life be saved on the operating table so that he could be put on trial, get convicted and serve eight years in prison, and then get paroled to continue his chosen career of crime. Even more confusing is when an execution is put on hold because the convict is ill.

  The explanation to Suzi isn’t sinking in. I try to build up my case with a logical series of questions. “Do you think that a person accused of a crime is entitled to a trial?” She gives me an affirmative nod. “Do you think that the accused should be entitled to have an attorney represent him at trial?” I take her silence as acceptance of the premise. “Do you think that the only type of lawyer allowed to defend a person accused of murder should be an attorney who believes that murder is appropriate behavior in our society?” More silence. I think I see the dog nod. “Okay, then if you agree he’s entitled to a trial by an attorney who doesn’t agree with the acts he’s accused of, who should represent him? It’s got to be someone, and since most criminals can’t afford to hire a dream team, it’s the court’s job to appoint some lawyer to do the job.

  “In most instances where there’s only one defendant involved on a non-capital case, a deputy from the County’s Public Defender’s office handles it. If there’s more than one defendant involved, the public defender can only handle one of them. It would be a conflict of interest for that office to handle more than one, because it would compromise one defendant’s right to testify against the other. In cases like that the court usually chooses from a list of lawyers on the ‘appointment’ list. On high profile capital cases, the court can use its discretion to appoint anyone it wants to handle the case, usually someone the judge feels is competent and can give the accused good representation. So there you are. Myra is handling the defense. She doesn’t have to like the guy or believe in his innocence, all she has to do is make sure that if he gets convicted, he’s had an opportunity to have only admissible evidence properly presented against him, and that anything that could possibly be used in his defense is presented to the trier of fact, be it judge or jury. And if she fails to do that, then she’s a failure as an attorney.” They walk out of the room without making any comment. I don’t think the dog was convinced either.

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  I don’t know how she did it, but Myra convinced Renzi to cooperate with the civil case. Maybe she told him that showing he can be a stand-up citizen and cooperate with a court’s discovery order might help him at time of sentencing if he loses the criminal case. It doesn’t really matter what she said, the important thing is that with the approval of the County Jail, we are going to be allowed to take his deposition in one of the jail’s attorney visiting rooms.

  I’ve been in L.A.’s old County Jail many, many times, but never was very comfortable with the Sally Port. Before you can enter the area where the ‘general population’ is, you walk into a portion of the hallway that has a double set of sliding, barred doors. The first one opens and you walk in. Then that first door slams shut behind you and you’re completely locked in between the two doors. After the first door slams shut the second one slides open, allowing you to continue walking down the corridor towards the visiting area. The system is designed so that at no time can both sliding doors are allowed to be open at the same time. It seems so nice that prisoners aren’t allowed to casually stroll out like regular citizens; it fosters creativity so they can figure out other ways to escape, and they do. But Vito Renzi didn’t, and the guards have him sitting in the lawyers’ conference room waiting for us.

  It‘s a small room but we all manage to squeeze in there, all six of us, including me, Myra, Vito, a guard, the court reporter and Palmer’s insurance lawyer. Myra insists on being there to make sure that there won’t be any mention of a fact that might possibly relate to the criminal case. I don’t object: there’s nothing like another friendly face around when you’re in jail.

  As expected, Renzi denies any abusive behavior towards Maggie. In his mind, all the acts he’s accused of were invited by her and definitely welcomed. She was just playing coy by pretending to be embarrassed by them. This is typical thinking for people who are accused of acts like this. In their own mind everything they do is justified. They’re not doing anything wrong, it’s everyone else’s fault for misinterpreting it, and the alleged victim is only lying about her feelings by overacting and saying what her lawyers want her to say. It’s all a conspiracy for greedy Jewish lawyers to make money.

  After hearing the eloquent Mister Renzi give us his opinions about women and Jewish lawyers, I think I’ve heard about all I need to decide that I’d love to get him up in front of a jury. I thank Mister Renzi for cooperating and sharing his thoughts with us and end the deposition after only twenty minutes, instead of the planned two hours. During my questioning I wasn’t interrupted once with an objection by either Myra or the insurance defense attorney. Everyone in the room but Renzi knew what type of personality we were dealing with. He’s nothing but a racist sociopath and a sexual predator.

  Maggie, Stuart, Jack and my office staff are all pleased with the results of the deposition. Armed with the printed transcript and the affidavits of several other former female employees of Palmer’s restaurants, we have a pretty good chance to settle this case for a decent sum. Interrogatories answered by Palmer’s attorneys show that they never followed the proper procedures as set forth by federal law. In 1991 Congress amended Title VII to permit victims of sexual harassment to recover damages, and in 1993 the U.S. Supreme Court broadened the reach of the law by making it easier to prove injury.

  These developments caused most concerned businesses to put certain safeguards in place, both for the employees and the business itself. The courts will generally find an employer liable for hostile environment and sexual harassment by a supervisor or co-worker when the employer failed to establish an explicit written policy against sexual harassment, and did not have a reasonably available avenue by which victims of such conduct could complain to someone with authority to investigate and remedy the problem - someone other than the accused harasser.

  The fact that Palmer was also rumored to consider himself quite a “lady’s man” added to our complaint that he violated the law further by not providing an avenue of complaint to someone who is not involved in or condones that type of behavior. The insurance company said they’d consult with their client and get back to us. I only hope that the same defense attorney who attended Renzi’s deposition in jail will have an opportunity to hear Palmer speak off the record. If so, he’ll realize that they’re both cut from the same bolt of cloth when it comes to lack of respect for women. These are two excellent witnesses for us to sicken a jury with. If they have a brain, they’ll settle, especially because I elected to file Maggie’s lawsuit in California state court instead of federal court. While each state must follow the federal guidelines, the states are also allowed to be more liberal towards victims, and California courts are. After all, this is the state where the ‘casting couch’ was invented.

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  There should be a law against most of the local news seen on television. It’s so depressing. Due to Suzi’s self-imposed cooking strike during the trial, I’m eating my thawed-out eight-ounce Trader Joe’s Spinach & Mushroom Lasagna, as the blow-dried newsreader works from his teleprompter. “And now, here’s an interesting development in the parking lot murder of that Chinese restaurant owner; this morning, Myra Scot, the former district attorney who recently beat her old boss in a high profile fraud case, informed the prosecutor’s office and
the court that she would be claiming her client acted in self defense when taking the life of that restaurant owner. We caught up with district attorney Miller later this afternoon and he made this statement.”

  There he is, in the flesh. The famous Bill Miller, looking like he just stepped out of a men’s store window. The silk in his tie matches the silk in his exposed kerchief, and I’m sure that the leather of his shoes matches the leather of his watchband. It’s too bad that he has to speak. It detracts from the fashion statement he makes.

  “Mizzz Scot is showing us how desperate she is now. There’s no way that the small, wiry victim could have threatened that husky defendant in any way, but we do have to thank his lawyer for saving us the trouble of proving that he shot the victim. You see, you’ve got to admit doing something before you can claim you did it in self-defense.”

  Fortunately the reporter is still awake, so he gets to ask one question.

  “But Mister Miller, Miss Scot claims that the victim had a weapon, which he drew first. She claims her client shot the victim to save his own life.”

  “I want to say right here and now that the murder took place on a Tuesday afternoon, outside of a restaurant that was hosting an inter-agency meeting of several local law enforcement organizations. Within a minute of the murder, the crime scene was crowded with over twenty professional, experienced law officers and a complete search took place. The victim was not armed. No weapon was found. I look forward to addressing that defense in the trial.”

  Suddenly this dinner doesn’t taste as good as it did when I ate the first half of it last night. What is Myra doing? She would’ve stood a much better chance just admitting that her client was there that afternoon, but that the victim was alive when their brief meeting ended. They never found a murder weapon. I think she’d be better off denying the shooting and trying to establish probable cause that someone else killed the victim after her defendant left him; someone like maybe an Asian gang from the Gardena casinos. It couldn’t hurt to blame the shooting on someone who the well-dressed district attorney was known to have made public statements about in the past, claiming his belief in their guilt. But who am I to tell her what to do? I never could do it during our marriage, and I’m certainly not going to try now. You’d think that Suzi would be happy to hear that an impossible defense was going to be raised. Now the killer of her ‘uncle Charlie’ would certainly be convicted. Every day she seems to sink even deeper into her blue mood. Maybe it’s because she feels bad about how badly Myra will be embarrassed in court when she loses the trial. This is a lose-lose situation for the kid. Even if her uncle’s killer is convicted, she’ll still feel bad for her friend, the lawyer who lost the case.

  Myra and I agreed not to communicate while she was handling this case. I want to honor my part of the agreement, so I don’t call her at home to tell her my concerns and give her any strategy advice. She’s a big girl now.

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  The doc’s insurance claims are coming along fine. And it looks like we’ll be able to get something in the neighborhood of fifty thousand for Maggie. The Doc will collect his two million policy benefit plus whatever punitive damages we can stick that company with, notwithstanding their clever tactic in suggesting we wait and settle the whole thing at one time. I let them know that we don’t think waiting years for this matter to drag through the courts is such a good idea. My court motion is successful in having the matter severed, so that they have to pay the two million dollar policy amount immediately, and let the punitive damage portion take its normal course through the civil legal procedure.

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  Thinking that everything is under control never seems to work for me. It’s like trying to sit down and get some reading done. Something always interrupts my solitude, and this time it’s Stuart, who always manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He calls to let me know that he’s being sued. I tell him not to worry, that we can stall any civil suit for at least two or three years. He can’t wait for a meeting at the boat. He’s too emotionally involved in it and insists on telling me over the phone, and there’s no stopping him. According to Stuart, one of his weight loss supplement ‘clients’ has been taking that product he sells. After about six months on the stuff, she claims she’s become a nymphomaniac. I have trouble trying to figure out how she’ll go about proving up that claim at time of trial, but would sure like to see her try. This is definitely a new area of the law, one that I’m not really familiar with. From what Stuart says she’s claiming that he negligently failed to have the product properly tested by a lab, and that his negligence has caused her condition. If I understand her contentions correctly, what she’s proposing is that Stuart is liable to her on a theory of ‘Negligent Nymphomania.’

  This case is too interesting to pass up, so I start doing some preliminary research and can find only one case that even comes close to this one. It’s an old case from back in the nineteen sixties. A woman was struck by a San Francisco cable car and she claimed that the trauma caused her the same problems: she became a nymphomaniac, and she got fifty thousand in a settlement. I tell Stuart that this is probably the best thing that could happen to him. If news of this case were to get out, he could make a fortune selling that potion to husbands and Lotharios all over the world as “Stuart’s Aphrodisiac” and claiming that Sexual history has been made! Maybe he can make a deal with Pfizer and put together a ‘his-and-hers’ gift package containing a porno video, a thirty-day supply of his love potion, plus a batch of Viagra pills. Just what any fading relationship needs for a kick-start. I’ll bet that Doctor Phil would endorse it on one of Oprah’s shows.

  Stuart is not amused. “Don’t you understand? They want to drag me into court.”

  “What’s the matter pal, when she struts into court looking slender, sexy, and all worn out, there won’t be a guy in the country that’ll vote against you. The jury will be all yours. It’ll be a great victory for you and your product line.” It’s easy to give advice when you’re not the one being sued. I tell him to try and relax and to bring any more legal papers he receives to my office. We’ll handle his defense. Stuart follows my advice and a few days later he brings me the Summons & Complaint he was served with. I turn it over to my office staff for preparation of an answer and immediately notify the plaintiff’s law firm that we want to take her deposition. I want to see this dame, mostly to find out what kind of whack job gets horny from taking the stuff that Stuart sells. Too bad I gave him that bottle back. I should have gotten Myra to try it.

  Now that the doc has his first two million and is taking a round-the-world cruise on some big ocean liner, and Maggie’s case will surely be settled soon, I have the time to devote to Stuart’s case. He has plenty of money now, so he’s obviously a target defendant. I let him know that if he weren’t so successful, this case would never have been thought of to begin with. He agrees with me about the benefits that the publicity might bring him, so he gives me carte blanche for expenses in pre-trial discovery, motions and investigation. The game is afoot.

  Our office schedules the plaintiff’s deposition in the conference room of our court reporting agency’s office and we’re told to meet her outside the building at the downstairs newsstand, so that all of us can go upstairs together. This is another strange request from my office, but after a while I’ve gotten used to it so I just do as I’m told. Right on schedule the Plaintiff, Miss Nancy Cook shows up with a tall, distinguished man dressed in an expensive suit. I assume he’s her attorney, so we shake hands like fighters do in the ring before the bell rings for the first round. We go upstairs together and are all seated in the conference room. The Defendant is also entitled to be present at all official proceedings, but after a lengthy discussion I convince Stuart to not be there. I want a clear crack at her without distractions or intimidating glares of contempt or disbelief being silently exchanged across the conference table.

  The questioning begins as I read off of a prepared list. The people in t
he room look a little surprised that we’re spending the money for this deposition just to simply ask Interrogatory questions, but I wanted the opportunity to see this plaintiff in person. My personal opinion of her is that she has always been a closet nymphomaniac, but finally latched onto a profitable way to ‘come out.’ She’s an auburn-haired girl in her late thirties, with far too much makeup on. Not exactly in the Tammy Fay Baker category, but still too much for my liking. And you don’t have to be a Saint Bernard to smell this human a mile away. It is definitely eau de cheape.

  We go through the statistical stuff first: name, address, date of birth, occupation, driver’s license number, job history, and on and on. She worked in several companies as a receptionist, and in between those jobs was a manicurist. My impression of her is that it wouldn’t be too difficult to establish her as a party girl, but because she had never been engaged or married, it would be tough for us to establish a pattern of her sexual behavior. There’s always a possibility that she might get away with proving up an insatiable appetite for sex even if she didn’t act on the urge. It’s always a crapshoot when you get to court, so we have plenty of homework to do on this one. I hate to do it, but the questions have to be asked about her sex life, past boyfriends and all the steamy details. Strangely, she doesn’t seem to mind. In a way, it’s like she’s exhibiting herself by parading the blow-by-blow description of her sex life for us would-be voyeurs. I’ve never handled a case like this before and have no idea of what a jury might think of her.