An Engineered Injustice (Philadelphia Legal)

by Myers, Jr. , William L.

  “Have you heard anything more from Jimmy Nunzio?” Tommy asks on the ride back to Philadelphia. Vaughn had fessed up to Mick and Tommy about meeting the mobster despite their strong advice not to. Predictably, Vaughn’s decision made Mick angry, and he let Vaughn know it. Tommy, however, let it slide off his shoulders.

  “No, and I don’t want to.” Vaughn thought for a minute, then said, “I’m hoping that if nothing else comes out that’s bad for Eddy, Nunzio will let the NTSB do its job before he makes any decisions.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that. Guys like Jimmy Nutzo don’t sit around and wait for other people to get things done.”

  The way Tommy puts it stirs something inside Vaughn. “You think Nunzio will look into the crash himself? Do his own ‘investigation’?”

  “Why do you think he wanted to see you?”

  All of a sudden, Vaughn wishes he hadn’t parked Eddy in the middle of nowhere.

  Two days later, Vaughn and Eddy move through the concourse at 30th Street Station. People stop and stare at them as they walk by. Two Amtrak cops leaning against the passenger-service desk straighten up and glower. Vaughn calls Nelson Wexler on his cell, and Wexler tells him to wait by the elevators at the northwest corner of the building. After a few minutes, the elevator doors open and an Amtrak police officer appears and summons them inside. They ride up to the third floor, where the officer uses his ID badge to get through the security doors. He walks them down the hall to a large conference room with a table big enough to seat thirty.

  At the far end of the table are five men and a woman. Vaughn recognizes Nelson Wexler, who introduces himself to Eddy. The others identify themselves as NTSB rail accident investigator Albert Cruise; Dr. Mark Johansson, NTSB chief medical officer; Patrick Ellison from the Federal Railroad Administration; Jack Bunting, Amtrak deputy division engineer; Luke Jenkins, Amtrak general road foreman; and Emmitt Green, local chairman of Eddy’s union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

  Wexler asks Vaughn and Eddy if they want anything to drink. Vaughn declines. Eddy asks for coffee with sugar, and Wexler makes him a cup. Wexler walks to the other side of the table and begins.

  “Would you start by telling us what you did that day from the time you woke up until the time of the accident?”

  Eddy says he got out of bed at 2:45, left home at 3:15, and reported to work at 4:00 a.m. He left Penn Station at 4:40, on Train 151, arriving in DC at 8:20. “I had breakfast with one of the conductors, had my job briefing, and went over the Form Ds—those are the forms that tell us what tracks are out of service. Then we got on the train, Train 174, and left Washington at 10:10. We got to 30th Street Station in Philly at 12:01 and left five minutes later. The last thing I remember is heading into the Torresdale curve. The speed limit in the curve is eighty, and I reduced speed, so I was right about there as I entered the curve. That’s the last thing I remember before the crash.”

  “What’s your practice with respect to operating the throttle?”

  “Depends. If I’m going slow, I gradually increase speed. If I’m already going fast, I’ll accelerate to full throttle, then back off as I approach maximum speed. But I’d lowered my speed because I was going into a curve.”

  “What is the first thing you remember after the crash?”

  Eddy pauses here. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. This part isn’t easy for him. “I think I came to, for a minute, inside the cab. I was lying on what I thought was the floor, but it must’ve been the side of the engine. I was in a lot of pain, and I think I passed in and out of consciousness a couple of times. After a while—I don’t know how long—I felt people pulling me out of the locomotive. They were talking to me, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Then I was in an ambulance. And then, after that, the next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital. I’m not sure what day or time, but Kate was there.”

  Wexler continues his questioning, asking Eddy whether he experienced any mechanical problems with the train or the air brakes before the accident, what train traffic he passed on the way, and what he heard over the radio. Then Wexler turns it over to Jenkins, the general road foreman, who asks how long Eddy has been working that run, whether he felt comfortable with the equipment.

  “That exact run I’d been working for about two weeks,” Eddy answers. “And yes, I was fine with the equipment. I’ve driven the ACS-64s lots of times.”

  Answering other questions from Jenkins about his work schedule, Eddy says he worked five days a week, Friday through Tuesday, and that the day of the accident, a Monday, was the fourth day in his schedule.

  The FRA’s Patrick Ellison asks Eddy where he kept his cell phone during the run, and whether it was on.

  “I always kept my cell phone in my knapsack, turned off,” Eddy answered. “It’s a firing offense to have it on.”

  “When was the last time you were on the phone before the accident?”

  “I called Kate just before I boarded the train.”

  Ellison tells Wexler that’s all he has, and Wexler nods to the NTSB medical officer, who asks Eddy how he was feeling that day.

  “Physically, I felt fine. Mentally, I was a little stressed—and excited. My wife is pregnant, so I was thinking about that. And there’d been some break-ins in our neighborhood, so I was a little worried. That’s why I called Kate right before we left.”

  Dr. Johansson asks Eddy whether he was on any medication that day, whether he took meds for any chronic conditions. Eddy answers no.

  “Have you ever lost consciousness, or blacked out?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Ever have vertigo?”

  “No.”

  “Mr. Coburn, can you think of any reason you would have lost consciousness?”

  Eddy pauses, looks around the table, shakes his head. “No.”

  Ellison of the FRA takes over again. “I want to talk about fatigue issues,” he begins, and they spend some time on Eddy’s typical sleep cycle, what time he normally went to bed and got up, whether he would wake up during the night. Whether he felt he got enough sleep. Whether he felt tired during the day. Whether he has sleep apnea.

  To Vaughn, it feels as though the investigators are simply running through a standard list of questions, the tone of their voices neutral, not accusatory. For Eddy’s part, he is doing well, answering the questions rather than evading them. It’s obvious he wants to help.

  Then Wexler passes the baton to Deputy Division Engineer Jack Bunting.

  “So your phone was off and it was in your knapsack?” asks Bunting.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  Vaughn glances at Wexler. The IIC had told Vaughn the week before that Eddy’s phone was in fact found in the knapsack, turned off. Today, Eddy already confirmed that was his practice. Bunting seems to be retreading the facts.

  “Any chance you made a call to your wife after you’d begun the run, then put the phone away once the call was over?”

  Again, Vaughn looks at Wexler, who seems as perplexed as Vaughn is by Bunting’s questioning.

  “Come on,” Vaughn interjects. “You guys have the phone. You tested it. You already know the answer to these questions.” Beside him, Eddy stiffens, and Vaughn assumes it’s because his cousin is getting frustrated by the repetition.

  “All right, let’s shift gears,” says Bunting, a large man with a dark farmer’s tan. “You told us you didn’t have any sleep disorders and that you were getting enough sleep. Would it be fair to say that you were awake and alert during the run from DC to Philadelphia, and then after you left 30th Street Station?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you can’t think of any reason you’d have lost consciousness?”

  “None.”

  “And we know that once your train rounded the curve at Torresdale, it was straight track through to where your train struck the TracVac. And I think the NTSB investigators measured the distance from the end of the curve t
o the machine at eighteen hundred feet.”

  “Uh . . . okay.”

  “Can you think of any reason why, if you were facing forward and looking at the roadway ahead, you wouldn’t have seen the TracVac?”

  Eddy takes a deep breath, opens his hands. “No, I can’t.”

  “So would it be fair to say then that you weren’t facing forward and looking ahead, like you’re supposed to do when you’re driving a—”

  “What is this?” Vaughn interrupts. “He told you he doesn’t remember anything after he started into the curve. Your questions are starting to sound like a cross-examination.”

  “I agree,” Eddy’s union leader Emmitt Green chimes in. “You keep going down this road, and I will strongly urge Mr. Coburn and his lawyer to end this.”

  “All right, all right,” Bunting says. “I’ve never been in one of these before, so maybe I don’t know the ground rules. I’m just trying to get as much information as I can.”

  “So stick to asking for facts,” Vaughn says. “Not speculation.”

  Jack Bunting nods, looks down at his notepad. “I only have a few more questions. They may be a little sensitive, but I have to ask them anyway.”

  Vaughn feels his hackles rise.

  “I read—we all read—about your car crash when you were younger. In your job application with Amtrak, did you disclose that you’d been convicted of a serious crime and gone to prison for it?”

  “Whoa!” Vaughn shouts. “What does his job application, or the auto accident, have to do with this?”

  Bunting slowly turns his head to Vaughn. “Well, for one thing, it shows us whether your client is the type of person who tells the truth. He’s asking us to rely on his answers to our questions, and I think we’re entitled to have some background on his veracity. It certainly is relevant whether he’s lied on his job application about having numerous criminal convictions, including a conviction for vehicular manslaughter. I think it’s also relevant whether he disclosed in his job interviews that he had a history of alcohol problems.”

  With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, Vaughn now understands what’s going on. Eddy must’ve failed to disclose all of this when he applied to Amtrak. And now Vaughn has failed to foresee this line of questioning. A huge blunder on his part.

  How do I get Eddy the hell out of this?

  His only choice is to instruct Eddy to plead the Fifth—which would look awful. Or he could end it.

  “That’s it,” Vaughn says, standing. “We’re done here. I brought in my client because he wants to do everything he can to help you figure out what happened. But this last line of questioning has nothing to do with the train crash, or what caused it. You’ve turned this from an inquiry into a witch hunt, and I’m not going to allow it. Come on, Mr. Coburn. We’re leaving.”

  Vaughn glares at Wexler as he turns to leave. The look in the IIC’s eyes shows Vaughn that Wexler is as upset by what’s happened as he is.

  “I’ll call you,” Wexler says.

  “Don’t bother,” Vaughn snaps.

  Vaughn catches a cab in the station’s taxi line, and he and Eddy get in the back seat. “I am so sorry, Eddy,” he says. “I led you right into an ambush. I should have seen it coming.”

  Eddy hangs his head and shakes it. “No. I should have known they’d ask me about my application. I didn’t put any of that stuff down because my sponsor told me not to.”

  “Your sponsor?”

  “The program. AA. He’s the one who got me the job. He works for Amtrak, and he’s pretty high up. He said they never check criminal records or substance-abuse history, so there was no point in tipping them off.”

  Vaughn nods. He gets it. Still, Eddy’s dishonesty is going to look bad when it goes public. And it will.

  Back at the office, Vaughn hands Eddy off to Tommy for the drive to Lancaster County. Then he goes into Mick’s office and tells him what happened.

  “I think you may be in over your head,” Mick says. “This whole area of the law . . . it’s just not something any of us have any experience in. We may have to bring in someone who’s more familiar with the railroads and the NTSB. Or, you may have to hand the case off.”

  Vaughn’s stomach sinks. With Susan so clearly opposed to him representing Eddy, he was counting on support from Mick. But Mick’s confidence in him seems to be waning.

  “Think about it. And get back to me.”

  Vaughn says he will and walks to his office, where he sinks into his chair and asks himself how he could have fucked up this badly.

  Back at 30th Street Station, Jack Bunting sits behind his own desk, smiling. He picks up his cell and dials. When the other man answers, he says, “It was beautiful. It went down just like we thought it would. You should’ve seen the look on that little shit’s face.”

  “Which one? The engineer or his lawyer?”

  “Both of them.”

  “Good work. Get his job application and the other records to you-know-who to leak to the press.”

  “Already done.”

  “Ahead of the curve, as always. Good man.”

  Bunting hangs up. Good man is right. He’s served the railroad for thirty years and done a damned good job of it. He’s been the highest performer in every job he’s held on his unfairly long trek up the corporate ladder. And what does he have to show for it? A meager $80,000 in a 401(k). And his pension, frozen two years ago, courtesy of Amtrak CEO Edward “A for Asshole” Plankton. Between the pension thing and a rising share of health-care costs, management is worse off than labor.

  What a way to run a railroad.

  “What goes around comes around,” Jack Bunting murmurs aloud. Thanks to the train crash, his financial worries will be over.

  In the meantime, he has to do something about Reggie Frye, the foreman of the track crew responsible for the TracVac. Frye was so obviously nervous during his own NTSB interview the week before that Bunting thought he was on the verge of confessing the whole plan. And since then, Frye has twice called Bunting, worried about the calls he was getting from reporters. Bunting told him to hang the fuck up on them, then asked why he hadn’t left town as instructed. Frye whined that he didn’t have the money to leave town and pressed Bunting about when he was going to be paid.

  Bunting resolves to tell the boss about Frye the next time they talk and persuade him to have Royce Badgett make the idiot disappear.

  11

  FRIDAY, JULY 4

  Erin Doyle sits at her desk in Day and Lockwood’s sun-drenched suite in the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center. It is cluttered with briefs, pleadings, mail, and legal pads. There’s a small clearing for the Apple laptop that sits directly in front of her. To her right are two windows overlooking Arch Street, forty floors below. Behind her is the interior wall on which she’s hung her college and law-school diplomas and her framed admission certificates from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the state of New Jersey, and various federal district courts. An assortment of struggling cacti sit in small pots on her windowsill. To Erin’s left is the interior wall adjoining the hallway, made of glass. Geoffrey Day told his architects he wanted to be able to stand anywhere in the suite and be able to see the whole way through, to the sky. Which means that every moment of the day, Erin’s painfully aware that anyone looking in the direction of her office can see what she’s doing.

  On Erin’s computer screen is the draft of a pretrial memorandum she’s been working on for hours. At the moment, however, her thoughts aren’t focused on the memo or the case, but on Vaughn Coburn and his ill-fated cousin Eddy. The whole firm is consumed with the train crash and the many cases it has brought in. Early on, Day assembled a team of junior associates to research the law related to train crashes and the regulation of the rail industry. Day is desperate to get up to speed so that he can look like the dean of rail-crash litigation when he appears on television. It’s also important that he be able to dazzle potential referring attorneys when they call to discuss handing off cases from t
he crash that they’ve picked up through relatives or happenstance. All of which is why the firm is hopping even through the holiday.

  The firm’s eight-person, full-time marketing department has been working on the crash night and day, constantly firing off press releases to the media and developing written brochures and pamphlets related to railroad law and train crashes. Before long, it will appear to the world as though Day and Lockwood is the epicenter of rail-crash litigation in the United States.

  Geoffrey Day himself oversees a working group of senior attorneys—all male—whose main job is to gather evidence related to the Amtrak crash. The associates spend most of their days on the phone or in meetings interviewing witnesses: passengers, first responders, police officers, and Amtrak employees.

  “I want to know more about this crash than the NTSB,” Day announced to the team, or so Erin was told by Corey King, who has ingratiated himself into Day’s inner circle. Corey thinks Day walks on water, and he’s so obsequious that some of the other associates ridicule him behind his back, saying, “Every Day has his dog.”

  Erin had never seen Corey happier than the morning the crash of Train 174 blasted its way into the news. Geoffrey called all the senior associates into the firm’s enormous main conference room to watch the floor-to-ceiling television screen. Junior associates and staff were allowed to watch the coverage through the conference room’s interior glass wall. Corey sidled up next to Day, beaming at the twisted wreckage on the screen. Watching him, Erin couldn’t believe that she’d ever dated such a jerk.

  “Looks like your boy’s cousin is going down.”

  “What the—?” Erin is stunned to see Corey King standing in her doorway, as though summoned by her thoughts.

  “He lied on his job application with the railroad. He never told Amtrak about his criminal convictions or imprisonment. Never told the railroad he’d crashed a car and killed a police officer, or that he’d had trouble with alcohol. It’s all right here,” he adds, holding up a manila folder. “Geoffrey is calling a press conference about it.”