by David Cooper
“Hear this one, then, Rufus. ‘We are astonished that you have considered it proper to include a statement from Rufus Squire, a partner in your recently merged firm, within the set of witness statements exchanged by email earlier today. The view we expressed earlier, as you will recall, was that your involvement in the defence of this action was at best questionable and at worst unethical. We expressed this view because one of the issues in dispute involves the introduction of a candidate to Bastable & Co, prior to the merger with Lewis Hackett under your new practice style BLH Solicitors. At the time you dismissed our concerns by asserting that the defence of the action was in the hands of your former Lewis Hackett division, leaving no risk of conflict or undue influence. It is now to our mind verging on professional impropriety for Mr Squire to be tendered as a witness while BLH are continuing to act. If we are to be expected to refrain from referring this anomaly to the judge prior to the trial, we can only ask that Mr Squire’s evidence is withdrawn or that a formal admission is made on the record that the Defendants are in breach of contract in relation to Mr Craven…’ And on and on it goes.”
Squire’s braying laugh echoed down the phone.
“Well, you know what you’re doing, Tony. I’m sure you’ll respond in kind.”
“Of course. He can get stuffed. He’s not going to want to lose the trial slot when he wouldn’t be sure of a fresh date before the restraint period expires. No guarantee he’d force us off the record anyway…Bear with me a moment.” Squire waited for Wagstaff to deal with whatever was causing an interruption. “Message to ring Grant. I’d better call you back.”
“Delivered by the lovely Shannon, by any chance? Give her arse a grope from me! Oh yes, before I forget, will you let Wayne know I’d like a word on the recruitment front? Nothing specific, at least not yet, but I’m almost getting to the end of my tether on something not a million miles from this little problem. Seb’s just about at the end of his too, but that’s another story.”
“OK, will do.”
* * * * *
From the moment that he had finished taking stock of Avery’s witness statements, Lennie sensed that the phone call he needed to make to Karen to discuss the opposition’s evidence was going to be fraught. He was not mistaken.
It was hardly surprising that Avery was still conceding nothing, and denying every fresh allegation that had been raised against him since he had made his original statement two months earlier. Without troubling to give chapter and verse, his new statement blandly asserted that Craven and the solicitor candidates who had defected from Ripple had all chosen to follow him of their own initiative and without any persuasion on his part, just as the three paralegals had done in the early days after he had launched his new agency.
Dwelling only briefly on Gemma Gabriel’s story, Avery had cited an anonymous tip off that it would be worth his while to contact her. He had flatly denied her claim that he had pitched for an exclusive arrangement to promote her to local law firms. Lennie noted that Avery had omitted, whether accidentally or deliberately, to comment upon her point that Bastable & Co had been irreverently known as ‘Bastards’ in the city’s younger legal professional circles. He made a note to flag it up in the brief that he would be putting together for Soraya in the following week.
Moving onto his past relations with Dawn, Avery had reacted ‘with deep regret’ to the thought that ‘my former close friend’ had inexplicably turned upon him and accused him of trying to destabilise her. Save for an oblique suggestion that his text message exchanges with Dawn from the key weekend ‘had more to them than met the eye’, he had gone into little detail, and had omitted to address the entries in his desk diary at all, let alone explain them.
Avery’s statement had ended by conceding, almost as an afterthought, that he was no longer looking to argue that Karen had breached his employment contract, even though he still thought that her redundancy consultation was a sham exercise designed to produce a foregone conclusion.
“It’s like trying to nail jelly to the wall.”
Lennie’s exasperated comment had been little comfort to Karen. Moving on to the paralegals’ evidence, Lennie and Karen noted that they were now finally accepting that they had shared Avery’s template when they had told Karen of their switch of allegiance, so soon after Avery had left Ripple and set himself up on his own. But neither Davenport nor Rider had made it clear whether they obtained the template from Thompson, the first of the threesome to defect, or from Avery himself. They had all then asserted that the phone traffic around the time of Avery’s resignation, and before he had opened his doors as Wave Recruitment, was merely consistent with the fact that they were all friends. Lennie noted that Thompson had chosen the phrase ‘good mates’ to describe this.
“This doesn’t mean they’re in the clear, Karen. If Wayne enticed them and he shouldn’t have done so, it’s still a breach of contract. The problem is whether you’d personally have had a serious chance of introducing all of them to new employers if Wayne had left them alone…”
Lennie had then moved, with a sense of trepidation, to the statement to which Squire had put his name.
“Karen, I can’t turn a blind eye to what happened between you and Squire. It’s a good job you told me, anyway. I’m pretty sure I can see what their agenda is. If you were to drop Craven from your schedule of claims, they wouldn’t have any need or reason to call Squire. The problem is that Craven’s such a crucial one for you. He was introduced to Bastables almost as soon as Wayne quit. If we can prove that he was poached, and it all kicked off while Wayne was still your employee and still a director of Ripple, it would leave Wayne twice as culpable. There’d probably be a floodgates effect on your claims over Hillier and Russon. And the other side of the coin is that if you only won on the paralegals, you’d be much less likely to get an injunction, and they’ve already made a financial offer that would cover those three…”
“Yes, I know. It’s all etched on my brain.” Karen groaned. “Can you give me any comfort at all? I dread to think what Squire’s going to come up with when he’s actually in the box, but is he going to be in court staring at me when it’s my turn? I’d almost rather cut my losses and get out now if I thought that was going to happen.”
“I really don’t think so. I’ve made it as plain as I possibly can that I think it’s completely improper for Squire to be called as a witness when BLH are acting for Wayne. If I was betting on it, I’d predict that they’ll only get ticked off for pushing boundaries, and the judge would then be on the lookout for anything that wasn’t squeaky clean. She’d expect Squire to be no different to a partner in a completely different firm who’d come to talk about how he recruited a candidate. No bias, no favouritism. So he’d have to keep his distance from the courtroom when he wasn’t needed there to give his evidence. And that’s the lesser evil compared with losing the trial slot if Wayne had to find another law firm at short notice. If we had to come back after the restraint has expired, the case would start to look stale, and you’d have more to lose than Wayne if that happened.”
“OK, Lennie, I think I get it. There’s no way I can drop the Craven claim. I’ll just have to sit there on the day and imagine Squire’s something I’ve just scraped off the bottom of my best Guccis. My only Guccis, I hasten to add.”
“Fair enough. I’d better let Soraya know. She’ll need to think carefully about this. The last thing we’d want to do is accuse a vastly experienced solicitor of lying on oath in court. Unless we had really good reasons. And I mean really good.”
* * * * *
“Yes, Tony?”
“Grant agrees. He’s confident he’d get the judge’s permission on the day for another witness statement, even if Rose gives us any grief in the meantime. Especially if the evidence is all set to refute one of the live issues then and there. So let’s go ahead as discussed.”
“Right you are. I’d better tell Seb to free up another slot in his schedule. Any idea what Wayne will think?”
“Thought he would be. Good old Wayne. What a sensible lad he is. Well insured with it!” Squire brayed once more before hanging up.
Wednesday 5 th June
‘To: Paul Craven (cc. Rufus Squire)
From: Seb Finnie
I have decided that you are to be included in the latest departmental appraisal round that will be taking place this week. Depending on its outcome, this may render your probation review unnecessary, but this is by no means guaranteed.
Your appraisal will take place on Thursday at 11.30 in Meeting Room 4. I am aware that this is a free slot so far as your diary is concerned. Please do not book any meetings or make any other arrangements that might overlap. Appraisals are to be treated as priority commitments, in accordance with the policy of the firm.
Please complete the accompanying employee questionnaire and return it to me by 4.00 today. I expect to be able to provide you with your written performance summary by 9.30 tomorrow.’
Craven had only just sat down to begin another working day, when the High Priority email from Finnie arrived. At first he thought that this only meant his probation review was being brought forward. But once he had read Finnie’s message for the second time, he realised that the exercise was going to be heading down a much more formal route than he could ever have expected. And that Finnie, rather than Squire, was going to be presiding over it.
“Oh God…”
In all the years he had worked at his previous firm in Stoke on Trent, Craven had never been subjected to anything of the kind. He had known that there would be no career progression available without embarking upon a fresh round of study and exams in order to qualify as a solicitor, an option without any appeal for him. Comfortable in his private personal niche, he had been perfectly happy to sit down with his line manager once a year for an informal chat about work in general, when he would also be given the news of his salary review. The partners in his old firm had always been indifferent to what they dismissed as nothing but trendy new ideas about staff management, and Craven was not remotely concerned about their casual approach.
Craven opened the questionnaire and began to look through what he had been asked to address. His trepidation increased at what struck him as the intrusive and yet vacuous nature of many of the questions.
‘What is your greatest strength? How do you anticipate building upon it?
What is your greatest weakness? How do you propose to overcome it?
What was your favourite client matter over the last six months, and why?
What was your least favourite client matter over the last six months, and why? What have you learned from this?
What new skills and experiences have you learned in the past six months?
Are you in good health?
Do you have an active social life?
What are your three greatest ambitions for the next six months?
What would you most like to change about your working environment and your supervision arrangements in the course of the next six months?’
Craven could hardly believe what he was reading. It seemed clear to him that the questionnaire, by the very nature of its formulaic and impersonal manner, was not likely to be of any practical use to the firm so soon after he had come clean to Squire that he was a victim of Asperger’s Syndrome. He wondered if there might be any point in asking Squire to excuse him from completing it, but knew that Squire was never going to take his side against Finnie.
Having tried unsuccessfully to put the questionnaire out of his mind and deal with a far more interesting client issue, he decided to find out what Jackie Browning thought of his predicament. She did not spare her views, but they gave him little comfort.
“Paul, I wouldn’t rock the boat…I mean, if I was in your position, I’d just fill it in as best as I could, and I’d hope Finnie wouldn’t get too uptight about what you’d put down. It’s all a load of box ticking anyway. They have to be seen to be doing something so that they can keep their Quality Standards approval. No one cares about it. Even the partners know it’s a complete waste of time.”
“But it’s so demeaning. If I can do my job, and meet my targets, why can’t they just pay me and forget all this play acting?”
“I wish I knew. Some of us try to make a joke of it. There was one occasion up here in property, when we all decided we’d include the word Penguin somewhere in our questionnaire answers, just to see if the partners were reading them properly. Four of them got through…”
“That’s funny. But I’ve got another problem. It’s that horrible Seb Finnie. I wish…”
“There’s your chance, Paul. This is supposed to be a two way process, up to a point. You could always suggest that your life at the firm would be so much better if you could report to Squire rather than Finnie.”
“I suppose so…” They carried on discussing Craven’s appraisal until he thought of something else. “Are you OK for the café this Friday, Jackie? I missed you last week.”
“Yes, I’m fine. See you there, usual time.”
Craven resigned himself to the task of completing the questionnaire, knowing that he would have little chance of tackling any constructive client work while it was still playing on his mind. It took him the whole morning. He cursed the wasted time that he could have spent more profitably on his files, and emailed it back to Finnie. The prospect of sitting opposite him in less than twenty four hours’ time, to discuss the contents of the questionnaire, was only marginally less appealing than the thought of reading what Finnie himself would write about him ahead of the appraisal.
* * * * *
‘We write to address two matters following exchange of witness statements yesterday.
‘Your objection to the inclusion of a statement from Rufus Squire can be dismissed out of hand. At all times during the course of this action, the Chinese wall between Bastable & Co and Lewis Hackett, the two former practices now comprised within BLH Solicitors, has been firmly in place. Mr Squire is a partner with close to thirty years’ worth of litigation experience and needs no lesson either from you or from your clients about any issue of professional propriety. We will not discuss this matter further and will seek any wasted costs occasioned by any application on your part relating to his evidence.
‘You could, of course, render it unnecessary to tender Mr Squire’s evidence if you were to confirm that your clients were no longer looking to include any allegation about the introduction of Mr Craven within the scope of their claim. We strongly encourage you to do so, given the tenuous and anecdotal nature of this particular allegation. Our position remains reserved upon whether to make an initial application to strike this head of claim out, prior to the substantive trial commencing.
‘We turn to the evidence of Gemma Gabriel. You will presumably not need to be reminded that it is necessary for witnesses whose statements remain in dispute to be called to give evidence in person. It has come to our attention that Ms Gabriel recently left the country for an indefinite period. Leaving aside the fact that you omitted to confirm this to us, we must make it clear for the avoidance of doubt that her evidence is not agreed. We will be objecting to any reference being made to her statement and its contents if she is not there to be cross-examined upon it.
‘Yours faithfully…’
Lennie read Wagstaff’s incoming letter and bit back an unsavoury expletive. He could not believe that Karen would have failed to keep him informed about something as important as an unavailable witness, if she had known anything about it. He immediately called her, but only made it as far as Dawn. She told him that Karen was interviewing a candidate, and promised to make enquiries of her own in the meantime. Ten minutes later, with Dawn’s investigation having already borne fruit, Lennie found himself looking at a Facebook entry posted six days earlier.
‘Bye bye Brummies, off to Oz after all. Flying out tomorrow. CU in 6 months. Or not as the case may be. If my dream job as a surfing instructor cum lifeguard doesn’t materialise, maybe I’ll be off into the outback with a Mick Dundee lookalike, or hosting I’m A Celebrity in place of Ant and Dec. Images of cold tinnies already dancing around my happy mind! Love and kisses, Gemma.’
The legal implications of Gemma’s message were plain to Lennie. Wagstaff had only been trying to call his bluff. A statement from a witness who was overseas at the time of a trial could be placed before the court without the need for any special permission. But there was still a drawback, because the judge would necessarily attach less weight to the statement. A witness whose evidence had been tested in cross-examination would always be looked upon more favourably than one who had only contributed to the process via a written statement. Gemma’s absence would be likely to leave Squire effectively unchallenged over what he had said about the use of meeting rooms on the day when he claimed to have interviewed Craven. More seriously, it would leave Avery with the upper hand in denying that he had tried to entice Gemma away.
“And were these bastards ever called Bastards?” Lennie muttered angrily, as he recalled the final element of Gemma’s statement.
Karen called Lennie back ten minutes later.
“I’m really sorry. I knew absolutely nothing about this. Gemma must have forgotten. Or assumed I didn’t need her. Not that I could have asked her to postpone her career break on my account.”
“It can’t be helped, Karen. These things happen. Anyway, you’ve no need to worry about getting her evidence in. What the judge makes of it is entirely up to her.”
“OK. I’ll trust your judgment on that. And before you ask, I’m one hundred per cent going to stick to my guns on Craven. I know it’s double edged, and I know what a massive favour I’m asking of Dawn. But there’s no way I’m going to let that two faced, lecherous toad Squire think he’s going to put one across me.”
