Wrongful Termination

by Mike Farris

  “Like I told you before, that dog won’t hunt no more. I’m asking you as a friend to send me the back-up for your bills for the past two years. All the timesheets and daily entries.”

  Tripp stopped pacing and sat back down, his mind working furiously. “It’ll take a while,” he said. “We’ve got all that on computer, but I’ll have to put in a special request to our accounting department for a printout. They can’t just drop everything and do it.”

  “How long?”

  “A month.”

  “Oh, come on, Tripp. Don’t you already have hard copies you can just photocopy and send me?”

  “It’s only on computer,” Tripp said. “And you’re talking about two years of records.”

  Patterson paused then spoke in a softer tone. “I’m sorry about this. If I weren’t already taking heat—”

  “Not your fault, Bill. Not your fault.”

  He hung up.

  Tripp stared at the phone for a moment. Suddenly he banged his fist against his forehead, knuckles first. Hard.

  Then again.

  He put the side of his fist in his mouth and bit down, teeth digging into flesh. Blood trickled across the back of his hand.

  Chapter Eighteen

  My analysis of Tripp’s calendar and his billing records on the Patterson McBain case fueled my anger, which was quickly transforming into hatred. Tripp had gotten an excellent young lawyer fired just to silence her. He knew that if she ever went public, it would be her word against his. He also knew that if she had been forced to leave under a cloud, he could paint her with a broad brush under the term disgruntled—a term that often spelled doom for any charge the disgruntled might raise. After all, what greater motive did one have to lie than being disgruntled?

  Now that I had the goods on Tripp, the question was what to do with them. For me to go public would be to admit that I had gone through his billing files. Though I had that right as a partner, my status in the firm was tenuous at best. The practicalities of admitting that I had exercised that right by sneaking around in the middle of the night included the risk of expulsion. The bulk of my partners would take a dim view of skullduggery when it was aimed at one of their own, no matter how pure the motive.

  I set up a lunch meeting with Meg to discuss options. I had not talked to her since she’d cleaned out her office, and I looked forward to seeing her again. We met at a tiny barbecue joint just around the corner from City Hall. There were only eight tables in the place, four running down each side. We sat in the front booth by the entry. From there we could hear the clanging of pots and pans and the sizzle of cooking food. The smoky aroma of mesquite-smoked brisket and ribs filled the tiny room.

  Her face was drawn, and dark blue circles were painted beneath her eyes as she laid a manila file folder on the table. “I’ve been working on my resume,” she said. “Will you look at it and see where you think I should beef it up?”

  “Of course.” I grabbed the folder and looked at its contents. “Do you want me to do it now?”

  “Just in the next day or so.”

  I closed the folder and put it on the chair beside me.

  “Now, what’s so urgent?” she asked.

  “I looked at the Patterson McBain bills. All the back-up documentation and the time entries. I’ve also compared them with Tripp’s calendar. It’s like we were saying before, you need proof if you decide to sue the firm. Well, the proof’s there.”

  “Which I don’t have and can’t get access to, so I’m right back at square one.”

  “All you have to do after you sue is serve a Request for Production on the firm,” I said. “Your time entries are reasonable…no unduly long days…but Tripp’s aren’t. I bet if you match up his time records on other files for the same dates, you’d find him with twenty- and thirty-hour days.”

  “He’s not that stupid, is he?”

  “He’s not stupid enough to do it in separate cases for the same client, but I bet he’d spread it among different clients,” I said.

  “You’re serious about me suing, aren’t you?”

  “I’m just giving you information. What you do with it is up to you.”

  Meg sat silently for a moment. She took a bite of brisket then looked out the window. She chewed slowly, a faraway look in her eye. She had a way of escaping the present and burying herself in concentration when she needed to.

  At last she turned back to me. “I’ve already set up interviews with a couple of other firms. So far, I’ve just been telling them that I want more trial experience, and that’s why I’m looking around. Everyone seems to accept that. But if I go public, I’m dead. Especially if I sue. Who’s going to hire a troublemaker who sues one of the most prominent firms in town and accuses one of its leading partners of fraud?”

  “I can’t tell you what to do. That’s gotta be up to you.”

  “I can’t just throw away three years of law school and one year of practice. This is what I’ve always wanted to do with my life. And right now, it’s all I’ve got. That’s why I resigned. I need the firm’s recommendation.”

  I listened without comment.

  “Still,” she said, “I’d love to see Tripp go down. For that matter, I might even like to see the whole firm go down because they let it happen. But that would hurt you.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll back you all the way, whatever you decide. But you’ve got to do what you think is right.”

  “I just wish there was some way to bring all this out into the open without me having to do it.”

  “Well, it can’t be me,” I said. “And other than the bad guys, we’re the only ones who know.”

  “So what do I do?”

  The easiest thing for her would be to keep quiet, find a new job, and get on with her life. That would also be tantamount to sweeping sleaze under the carpet. I knew her to be inherently decent and honest. The idea of letting injustice go silently into the night did not sit well. But to file suit would subject her to scrutiny that no decent person should have to undergo. I knew the firm and its tactics. It would try to turn a lawsuit around, making Meg the target of dirty tricks: pick apart her every moment at the firm, question her work product, nit-pick her day-to-day decisions, and drag her reputation as a lawyer through the gutter.

  Then it would target her relationship with me. Whether backed by evidence or not, the firm would spread the idea that she had been sleeping with a partner to advance her position in the firm. It didn’t matter whether it was true or not. A privilege applied in litigation, and the firm could, and would, say whatever it thought necessary to bludgeon her into submission. I had learned that, to the firm, truth was merely a commodity to be traded when the market called for it. If Meg sued, what passed for truth would bear very little resemblance to the actual facts.

  I pushed our plates aside then took both her hands in mine. They felt callused from gripping a tennis racket, her fingers long and nimble. I squeezed them, and she squeezed back.

  “I’m with you on this,” I said. “Whatever you decide.”

  *

  Tripp Malloy, Alvin Peoples, and Steve McGinnis huddled in Alvin’s office over a working lunch of sandwiches and chips delivered by a deli. “It had to be her,” Tripp said. “No one else has her sense of the dramatic.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Alvin said. “She’s already gone. We can’t control what she does outside the firm.”

  “I’ll take care of her. What you’ve got to deal with…what we’ve got to deal with…is the billing records. They’ve got to be cleaned up.”

  “What do you mean cleaned up?” Alvin asked.

  “Bill Patterson can’t see them like they are.”

  “Wait a minute,” Steve said. “Are you saying she’s telling the truth?”

  “You never cared before as long as Patterson McBain was paying us a million dollars a year. Now, all of a sudden, what, you’ve got integrity? Would you rather they pay some other firm that same million? That can be arranged, you
know.”

  “What’s Bill Patterson gonna find when he gets those billing records?” Steve asked. “Is he still gonna be paying you that million after he sees them?”

  “What makes you think she’s going to stop with Patterson? Or with me? Do you want her digging around in your files, too?”

  Steve’s silence gave Tripp his answer.

  “That’s what I thought,” Tripp said. “Now, if we handle this right, he’ll still be paying Black West and Merriam a million. That is what you want, isn’t it?”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Alvin asked. “Go through two years’ worth of billing records and change them?”

  A knock interrupted. Alvin’s stocky secretary stuck her head in. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but Mr. Malloy’s secretary just called and said to tell him she saw Mr. Muckleroy at lunch with Meg Kelly.”

  She saw that her news was not well received. “Is there something wrong?” she asked.

  “Just close the door and we’ll handle it,” Alvin said.

  *

  Meg and I left the barbecue joint, turned down the sidewalk, and strolled. The streets were crowded with Dallasites enjoying the day. The sun was out, the temperature in the eighties—an uncustomarily cool, late summer’s day in north Texas.

  I stopped short when I saw Tripp Malloy steaming our way. His jaw muscle knotted up like a chaw of tobacco and his face looked the color of a ripe tomato. Meg saw Tripp right after I did. Her face registered her disdain.

  “It’s not going to work,” Tripp said. Still fifteen feet away, he directed his comment at Meg.

  “What’s not going to work?” she asked.

  He pulled up to us, stopping only a foot away from Meg. She recoiled, as did I, from his invasion of her personal space.

  “Those little late-night phone calls,” he said. “They aren’t going to get you anywhere.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What are you talking about?” I piped in.

  The sound of my voice attracted his ire like a lightning rod. That was fine with me, if it pulled him away from Meg.

  “Are you in on this, too?” he asked.

  “Let me repeat,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know you’re behind this, Muckleroy, rallying her against me.”

  “If you really think you’re the topic of conversation when we get together, then your view of the world is way too small.”

  He smirked. “I guess that’s true. You two probably don’t talk much when you get together. You’ve got other things occupying your mouths.”

  Meg’s hand moved so fast it was a blur. I only heard the sound of flesh on flesh. The force snapped his head back, and his cheek instantly turned blood red, a deeper crimson than the anger had conjured up. I longed to get in a shot of my own but refrained.

  Tripp grabbed at his cheek with one hand. With the other, he pointed a bony finger in Meg’s face.

  “That’s becoming a bad habit with you,” he said. “I know people at other firms. People who make hiring decisions. So know this, and know it real clear: I’m putting the word out on you. By the time I’m through, no law firm in town’ll even hire you to clean floors at night.”

  “Careful, Tripp,” I said.

  “Careful, my ass. If she thinks she can ruin me with Bill Patterson, she’s got another think coming. Make no mistake about it, I can ruin her in this town.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?” I held up my hand, thumb and index finger about an inch apart. “You’re probably only this far away from setting yourself up as a defendant in a lawsuit. With me as the primary, and more than willing, witness.”

  “Don’t screw with me, Muckleroy.”

  “If you try to blackball me, I’ll sue you so fast it’ll make your head spin,” Meg said. “You don’t want that.”

  “What do you think you’ve got on me?”

  “I know where the skeletons are,” she said.

  Tripp threw his head back in an exaggerated fashion and brayed. “Hah! You think you do, but you don’t.”

  “If I have to sue, I’ll get the records in discovery. It’ll go public. Then what firm’s gonna want you?”

  “If you ever get your hands on my billing records, they won’t show what you think. So take your best shot.”

  “How many hours did you bill in Chicago that day?” Meg asked. “Or was that Boston?”

  Tripp leaned forward and lowered his voice, as he had recently done with me. I saw something in the intensity of his glare that scared me, but she held her ground.

  “This is your last warning,” he said.

  Then he walked off.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The man in the dark suit and cowboy boots seemed innocent enough. Alvin Peoples had been summoned to the lobby by the receptionist, who told him that the man wanted to see him but wouldn’t identify himself. Curious, but not concerned, Alvin came personally rather than sending his secretary. The man saw Alvin before he reached the end of the hall and met him at the corner by the receptionist’s desk.

  “Alvin Peoples?” the man asked.

  Alvin appraised the man with a wary eye.

  “Are you the managing partner of Black West and Merriam?”

  Alvin twirled his cigar then pointed it at the man. “Who are you?”

  The man reached into his inside coat pocket, withdrew a folded document, and held it out. “I’m with the U.S. Marshal’s Service. I have a subpoena for you as managing partner of the firm.”

  Alvin took the document and opened it. He glared at the marshal. “What’s this for?”

  “I just serve ’em, Mr. Peoples. You’ll have to take it up with the United States Attorney.”

  The marshal left a stunned Alvin Peoples in his wake.

  *

  Fifteen minutes later, the members of the Management Committee had gathered in Alvin’s office, where his usual array of cigars smoldered in various ashtrays. Oscar Hamilton, chairman of the firm’s Recruiting Committee, had joined them. Horse-faced, in his early forties, Hamilton viewed himself as a rainmaker, though his client originations were still marginal. He compensated for his thinning hair by wearing it longish in the back, curls trailing over his collar, and had recently adopted a look by shaving only once a week.

  Each man held a copy of the subpoena and tried to digest its contents as Alvin talked.

  “They want all our damn recruiting files for the past ten years,” Alvin said. “They want to know who we recruited, who we made offers to, who accepted, who declined, what we paid in salaries and benefits, and all communications with other firms about setting salaries. Now, I’d like to know what the hell this is all about.”

  Oscar dropped his copy in his lap. “Salary-fixing.”

  “What the hell?” Alvin said.

  “I’ve heard this might be coming. Seems the U.S. Attorney’s got a bug up his ass about big firms colluding to keep salaries artificially low. Some young guy’s heading up the investigation, and Ray Pearson’s giving him free rein.”

  “Where did you get your information?” Jake Goldblatt asked.

  “I have my sources.”

  “And they think we’re holding salaries down?” Jake said. “That they’re too low?”

  “My God,” Alvin exploded. “We’re paying pups fresh out of law school, still wet behind the ears, nearly two hundred thousand dollars a year. Hell, they don’t know a lawsuit from a hard-on, and we’re already paying them more money than about ninety-five percent of the families in this country make.”

  “It’s a witch-hunt,” Matt Cunningham said. “This guy probably couldn’t get a job with a big firm, so he’s getting revenge.”

  “Matt’s right,” Oscar said. “His name’s Don Wallace, and just about every firm passed on him out of law school. Hell, we did, too. But we don’t have anything to worry about if our files are clean.”

  Alvin dug in his ear with a car key, pulled out a gob of wax, and s
craped it off on the edge of the trash can. “Well, now, that’s the question, isn’t it? Are they clean? You’re the head of recruiting, Oscar. We okay on this?”

  “We stay in touch with other firms on what they’re paying,” Oscar said. “Everybody does. No one wants to be the first to raise the ceiling.”

  “So we do fix salaries,” Alvin said.

  “We just find out what others are paying, or they find out what we’re paying, then we all try to stay in line.”

  “It doesn’t matter who said what to who if it’s not on paper,” Alvin said. “I want to know what’s on our paper.”

  “We need to know what’s in the other firms’ files, too,” Steve said.

  “To hell with that,” Alvin said. “We can’t be held responsible for what someone else puts in their files. We can only be held responsible for what’s in our files.”

  “I’ll get my secretary to go through the documents and pull all this together,” Oscar said. “By the time we produce them, I guarantee there won’t be any problems.”

  *

  It didn’t take long for news of the Justice Department’s subpoena to make the rounds. I had learned long ago that ladies’ gossip circles had nothing on law firms. Rumor, innuendo, and gossip flowed like rising floodwater through a sewer system. Within days, the firm was rumored to be the specific target of a criminal anti-trust investigation. Alvin Peoples called a special partners’ meeting to set the record straight.

  At five o’clock the day of the meeting, the partners gathered in an auditorium belonging to the bank that owned the building in which the firm officed. Paneled walls and plush carpet decried any notion that this bank was on the verge of collapse. If it failed, its officers would go down in style. The room held three hundred with theater-style seating, more than enough space for the firm’s partners.

  I merged with the flow of partners heading that way when Charlene Nelson sidled up beside me. “How’s it going, Bay?”

  “Oh, I’m able to sit up and take a little nourishment.”

  She flashed the smile that had swayed many a juror. Two years my junior as a partner, Charlene had made her reputation as an aggressive, top-notch business litigator. Her flaming red hair, a smattering of freckles across her nose, and piercing green eyes testified to her Irish heritage. I had worked with her before and found her rigid and unyielding when she believed she was right, but she was always willing to consider the possibility that she might be wrong. Some thought her a bitch, the common term applied to aggressive women lawyers, but I knew her to be honest, genuinely seeking justice and not just playing the law game.