“Can’t be easy for either of you.”
“It has its moments. I think it’s just hard because I still remember what she was like before the episodes starting getting worse. Until I was ten, she was just like any other mom. Then the episodes started happening and I knew something was wrong. The medication helps, though. An antipsychotic that’s kind of new. Without it I never would’ve been able to leave her long enough to go to law school. But it kind of levels her out. She used to paint, and once she started the medication, she couldn’t do it anymore. She had a little studio and just completely abandoned it.”
“I’ve heard of things like that. I had a friend I used to share an apartment with. Really creative guy. There’d always be drawings of these magnificent buildings up on the walls. Stuff I’ve never seen before or since. He became an architect, but needed bipolar medication. Once he started the medication, he couldn’t work. Couldn’t come up with anything. He had to get off the medication so he wouldn’t lose his job.”
“That’s wild. Is he doing okay?”
“No,” I said. “He punched his boss in the face during a manic episode and got fired.”
She snorted, then immediately covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not funny.”
“No, it’s fine. He opened his own office, and he’s good now. Still not taking his meds, though.”
She sipped her drink. “What about you? Have you been to therapy?”
I grinned, then guzzled half my glass. “That’s a little personal for a first date, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know we were on a date.”
“We’re not. Forget I said that. I don’t want to get sued.”
“I think I’d hire Bob Walcott as my lawyer. He’d get a kick out of suing you.”
“Yeah, he definitely would.”
“What happened to his eye?”
“I think he’s faking it.”
“No!”
I nodded, taking another drink. “That’s the rumor. He fakes it to intimidate everyone. But all the plaintiffs’ lawyers think he’s faking it, so I don’t know who he thinks he’s fooling. Maybe you do something long enough, and you can’t stop.”
She shook her head. “Weird. What’s with you two, by the way? It seems personal.”
“When I first started, he took advantage of my naivety and screwed my client. I’ve never forgiven him. We’ve worked together a few times since then, but I usually let Marty or Raimi handle it.”
That reminded me that I had told my partners I would meet them. I took out my phone and saw I had two texts from Marty, asking where I was. I replied that I would be late and to get started without me.
“If you need to go, it’s cool.”
“No, it’s fine. I like it here. Reminds me of being in college. You went to BYU, didn’t you? What’d you major in?”
“You didn’t read my resume?”
“Honestly, I only looked at your extracurriculars.”
“Oh, yeah? You were impressed by my violin playing and chess?”
“Something like that.”
“I majored in math.”
“Seriously? Why would you possibly become a lawyer if you could be a mathematician?”
“I don’t know. Same as everyone else, I guess. Just want to help people.”
“There’re better ways to help people. You could work for a nonprofit or something.”
“Nonprofits need lawyers, too. Why do you hate the profession so much?”
“I don’t hate it,” I said, holding up a finger, “I don’t hate it.” I leaned back in my chair. The alcohol was warming my stomach and loosening my muscles. “I just think it’s a sham. It’s not what anybody thinks it is, and there’s a new law school popping up every day. People who don’t know what else to do with their lives become lawyers, and the market shrinks for everybody. It’s a race to the bottom. Within a few decades, lawyers will be charging so little, you won’t be able to survive on it. The day of even the middle-class trial lawyers is gone.”
“That’s depressing, considering I’m just barely starting out.”
“Don’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Become a lawyer. Find something else that you love and do that. The law is swimming with sharks because we’ve eaten all the fish. Don’t do it.”
“Wow. Didn’t think I’d hear that from my boss.”
I shrugged, finished my beer, and ordered another.
16
Olivia and I ate and drank well into the night. She had a casualness that was pleasant to be around. She was one of those people who could make strangers feel as if they’d known her their entire lives.
We talked about my life working as a ranch hand in Arizona after high school and about what had led me to law school. It was really just a billboard, one I think everyone else hated. A lawyer—I don’t even remember his name now—was sitting on the hood of his Ferrari and saying, “Accident? You wanna be rich? Call me today.” I didn’t even register the “accident” or the “call me today” portions. All I saw was a giant billboard that said, “You wanna be rich?”
At the time, I had six dollars in my checking account, and my job, which was seasonal, was ending in two weeks. The billboard spoke to me more than almost anything ever had. I quickly finished my bachelor’s degree in a night program while I waited tables during the day, and then I applied to six law schools. University of Kansas was the only one that accepted me, and I was approved for student loans to cover tuition. I loaded up on credits each semester and took summer classes, too—as many as I could. I finished law school in two years rather than three, then clerked for a nearby solo practitioner who focused on personal injury. I analyzed the markets for personal injury law and found that Utah, despite its two law schools pumping out graduates, had a low number of personal injury lawyers per capita. Only North and South Dakota had lower numbers, but I sure as hell wasn’t moving to either of those. I packed up one gym bag and took the Bar in Utah.
Olivia seemed amazed by the fact that someone could just pick up and move their entire life at the drop of a hat. She’d never lived anywhere except the house she had been born in and one summer in California.
Her experience of law school was a lot different than mine, too: she aced every class, was on the staff of every prestigious journal, and didn’t even seem to need to study. She said she would just glance at the assigned reading and know what the professors were looking for. For me, law school consisted of two years of pain and frustration. For her, it was a time to relax and get to know her fellow students.
I didn’t remember I was supposed to meet Marty and Raimi until I was home in bed.
I woke up the next morning and didn’t have a hangover. I even went for a quick jog before coming home to make coffee and have a croissant. When enough time had passed, I called Rebecca.
“How is he?” I asked.
“He’s awake now. We’re just watching television. They think he can go back to ICU this afternoon.”
“Rebecca, I need to talk to you about something. An offer’s been made on Joel’s case.”
“Already?”
“Yeah, it’s customary to negotiate at the outset on something like this, even though both sides don’t have all the information yet. They offered one million. Our firm would get a third of that, and the rest would go to you. You probably wouldn’t ever have to work again if you were careful with the money.”
“And they’re going to come out publicly and say what happened?”
“No, the opposite. They’ll draft a gag order for a judge to sign. It’ll state that you can’t ever talk about the case to anyone in public. If the terms of the deal ever got out, they could sue you.”
“They won’t even apologize? They’re going to get away with this?”
“We don’t know for sure how much they’re l
iable for this. There could very well be some maniac out there poisoning children’s medicine. It’s weird that it’s only one medicine and only in one geographic location and that there haven’t been any additional cases, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that this was one person who tampered with a few bottles after the cough syrup was already in stores. Pharma-K is offering this money to get this case out of the news and move on. The more people hear about it, the fewer will buy their cough medicine and other products.”
Silence a moment.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don’t care about the money. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else’s child. And I want to know why my son is dying. You can’t imagine how important that is. But I’ll do whatever you say. I trust you. If you say to take it, I’ll take it.”
I leaned against my kitchen counter. I could tell her to take it, and our firm would have over three hundred thirty-three thousand in the bank by the end of the week. I could tell her not to take it, and we might spend five times that litigating this thing.
The first thought that entered my mind was of Joel being wheeled around that corner. He’d looked so out of it, as if he could go at any second. Rebecca was right: if Pharma-K had anything to do with this, they were getting away with it. No one would ever find out what happened, and it might happen again to someone else. But that wasn’t my problem, was it? I was their lawyer, not their family counselor.
I opened my mouth to tell her to take it, but then I stopped. I kept playing that scene over and over again: Joel being rushed around a corner, doctors working frantically to save his life.
“Don’t take it,” I said. “We can ask for ten times that from a jury, and we might get it if we can show fault on the company’s part. Even if it’s just that they didn’t tamperproof the medicine well enough.”
“Okay, I won’t take it. So what happens now?”
I sighed. “Now we go to war.”
17
The first step in litigation was interrogatories—long questionnaires sent between the parties to gather as much information as possible. I set up a command center in the first conference room and recruited Olivia, two associates, and a paralegal to do nothing but work on Joel’s case. The first morning, I went through all the types of questions I wanted asked. We covered every relevant question and all the irrelevant ones. Are you married? How long? Do you have kids? Do you have a dog? What’s your religion? How do you feel about Pharma-K? How many years have you lived in this state? What did you do when you heard about the injuries to the three children?
We drafted well into the evening. I left and went home to sleep, but sleep didn’t come right away. I stayed up most of the night staring at the ceiling. Joel’s case was going to be a true battle. When I’d called Bob to tell him we wouldn’t take the deal, he started banging his phone against his desk.
He threw every cuss word he could think of at me before he screamed, “He’s fucking invisible!”
I didn’t even respond. I just hung up. I didn’t know why I thought this case had such a high valuation, but something in Pharma-K’s behavior told me I had to know what they were hiding. The trick was not bankrupting the firm in the process. If costs weren’t controlled—with experts, depositions, briefs, pulling resources away from other cases, and the opportunity cost of turning other cases down to work on this—we could easily spend a million in a year. If the case dragged on for a few years, our firm would be out of money.
When I arrived at the office the next morning, Olivia was still in the conference room, with the paralegal, drafting away. Only the lawyers had gone home. Raimi came up behind me, and Marty came in front.
“Are you crazy?” Marty said. “They offered seven figures.”
“We can’t take it.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re hiding something.”
“So what? Everybody’s hiding something. They offered seven figures.”
Raimi said, “It was far in excess of the value of this case, Noah. You need to advise the client to take it.”
“They offered seven figures!”
“Guys,” I said, “when have I ever screwed us? Hmm? Can you think of one time I took a big case and it didn’t pan out? We will get more for this case.”
“How much more?”
“I’m going to ask for ten million.”
Marty laughed. “You’re outta your mind. Are you on drugs? Is that what this is?”
“They will pay us. We just need to push them a little bit.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know—a little bit.”
Raimi shook his head. “They offered at least twice what this case is worth to settle it. If they perceive that we think we can keep getting more by pushing this along, they’ll feel it’s better to risk a trial.”
“And we’ll settle before that point. But for now, I think we can get a lot more.”
I brushed past the two of them and went to my office. I shut the door behind me and sat at the desk. I unplugged my office phone, then turned to the windows and looked down at the streets. Raimi was right: they had offered far more than the case was worth. Even if they had offered to pick up the medical bills, it would’ve been a gift. As far as anyone knew, Pharma-K had nothing to do with the poisoning. Doubt still lingered, though. If I could plant that doubt in a jury’s mind, they might side with us. And in a civil case, I didn’t need every juror, just a simple majority of them.
The worst thing that could happen to this case, of course, was if the police made an arrest. If some crazy hillbilly with no connection to Pharma-K was the one poisoning the medicine, we were sunk. The company wouldn’t even pick up the medical bills at that point, and Rebecca Whiting would be out her million dollars. We needed to speed this litigation along before that could happen.
I plugged my phone back in and dialed Jessica.
“Yeah?” she said.
“Get Luke to draft the complaint for the Whiting case. Tell him I’d like it filed within twenty-four hours. Once it’s filed, I want the soonest court date we can get.”
“Gotcha. Which court?”
I hadn’t even thought about venue. Wherever we filed the lawsuit was going to have a big impact on the outcome. Federal courts had jurors who were typically more educated and better informed, but that might not be a bonus in this case. Maybe we wanted the average Joe Schmoe who would imagine himself in the position of Rebecca Whiting.
“I want it in state court,” I said.
“Okay. We’ll get it done.”
“Thanks.”
I left my office and went back to the conference room. The two attorneys still weren’t there, and only the paralegals and Olivia were working.
“Sally,” I shouted down the hall.
“What?” came a reply from somewhere in the guts of the office.
“Get me two more of Raimi’s guys.”
“Okay. Give me an hour.”
One thing about the Commandant: she never questioned orders. I stepped inside the conference room and shut the door.
18
On a big case, interrogatories could take months. In this case, they took two weeks. We received vague answers on the 112 of them that we sent. In turn, on the two we’d received for Rebecca and Joel, we also gave vague answers.
Meanwhile, KGB scored the surveillance video from Greens. On the date Rebecca bought her medication, it showed her picking up the medicine, paying for it, and leaving. I paid Anto to watch the entire video for that day and the day before. No one had tampered with the medicine the day Rebecca bought it, or the day before.
The first court date had been set. We placed the case at the West Jordan District Court, and a judge named Gills had been assigned.
I had been in front of Nathan Gills only once. I’d tried a dog-bite case to the bench—meaning the judge, not a jury
, was the decider—and lost. I’d thought it wasn’t a terrible case, but Gills had disagreed. Though, in fairness, we should have lost that case because liability wasn’t clear.
The main thing I remembered about him was his proclivity for swearing while on the record. I initially thought I misheard him, but then he’d kept doing it. I’d asked the bailiffs about it afterward, and they had said that was how he was.
The morning of court, I met with Olivia. Though we had four other actual attorneys on the case, I had made her my lead on Joel’s case. She was passionate about it in a way the other four weren’t. I didn’t think they liked taking orders from a clerk—you didn’t become an associate until you passed the Bar exam—but I informed them she was going to be my right hand.
Olivia sat in my office, sporting a business suit I hadn’t seen her wear before. I’d expected her to come in with stacks of notes and files, but all she had was her phone.
“You got everything on there?”
“Yup,” she said. “All the interrogatories. The complaint, the answer . . . pretty much everything. And it’s easy to search and find something. I think those days of lawyers carrying boxes of documents into court are over.”
“The boxes were usually filled with copies of the same document. It was a show for the clients to make them think we were prepared.” I checked my watch. “Let’s go. Judges hate it when you’re late.”
We took my car down. The West Jordan District Court was an L-shaped building with metal detectors up front, and three floors of clerks’ offices and courtrooms. The first floor was nothing but clerks, the second was juvenile court, and the third housed the criminal and civil courts. Gills was on the third floor and off to the left when we stepped off the elevator. Before going in, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I opened the door for Olivia and said, “Remember one thing above anything else: if you say something confidently enough, people will believe you. Even if you’re wrong.”
An Invisible Client Page 9
