Blood Brothers (8 page)

A messenger delivered the promised full-court press to Ben’s office the following Wednesday, forty-three minutes after Ben had called Karl Bjornsen’s lawyers to tell them that Gunnar wasn’t interested in their proposal. The documents nearly filled an entire banker’s box. Ben sighed and signed for it. Then he took it into the conference room, where he could spread out the papers and go through them without worrying about accidentally mixing in something from the other piles on his desk.

An hour later, Noelle walked by and noticed him in the conference room surrounded by court filings. “What’s up?”

“I got a care package from Bert Siwell. He’s teed up half a dozen motions for hearing on the emergency call tomorrow morning.”

“What kind of motions?”

Ben put down the document he had been reading and stretched. “Let’s see. There’s a motion for a temporary restraining order that would require Gunnar to immediately turn over the process for making Neurostim, a motion for a preliminary injunction, a motion for a permanent injunction, a motion for expedited discovery, one hundred and fifty-three pages of discovery requests he wants expedited, a motion to dismiss Gunnar’s counterclaim, and—last but not least—a motion for sanctions against both Gunnar and me personally.”

“Sanctions? What for?”

“For daring to bring a counterclaim that is . . . hold on a sec, I can’t do it justice.” He searched the table for the sanctions motion, found it, and flipped through it. “Here we go: ‘for bringing a counterclaim that is so ill considered, so patently frivolous, so clearly lacking any basis in fact or law, and so laughably puerile’—I’m pretty sure Bert had his thesaurus out by that point—‘that it demands sanctions.’”

Noelle stared at him, her mouth and eyes wide in angry disbelief. “Is he serious?”

Ben shrugged. “He’s obnoxious. He’s also pretty funny, usually on purpose, and he’s good on his feet, so he gets away with a lot.”

“What a piece of work. So how come all this is an emergency?”

“It isn’t. What he’s really doing is punishing Gunnar and me for rejecting his settlement offer. I’ll be working on responses all night.” He grinned. “But then, so will Bert—or at least the people working for him. I just sent them our box half an hour ago. I hope they didn’t have plans for dinner. I also hope you won’t be seeing Gwen Bjornsen again anytime soon.”

Ben’s dinner that night was leftover Giordano’s pizza from the office fridge, washed down with the flat remains of a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. He was on his second slice when Gunnar called. “I just read through the court papers you e-mailed to me. Some of the things they say are completely outrageous! Aren’t there ethical standards against this kind of garbage?”

“Sure. Some of them are cited in the sanctions motion against you and me for daring to countersue Karl. I’m not too worried about that motion, though. It’s not likely to be granted, so the best thing to do is ignore it.”

“So you don’t recommend asking for sanctions against Karl and his lawyers? I don’t like letting someone punch me without punching back. It sends the wrong signal.”

“Not in court,” Ben replied. “Judges generally hate sanctions motions. Except in really extreme cases, like destruction of evidence or lying under oath, judges view this type of motion as the written equivalent of a temper tantrum. Throwing our own tantrum in return isn’t likely to do us any good. I know it’s tempting to respond in kind to this sort of insulting trash, but it really isn’t a good idea. We shouldn’t let it distract us from the motions that really matter.”

“Like the motion for a temporary restraining order?”

“Yes. Exactly. That’s the one that worries me the most. If they get the TRO they want, you’ll have to tell them how to make this new drug, and their case against you will basically be over.”

“I thought that’s what it meant,” said Gunnar. “Do you really think the judge would do that to me?”

“He could. This judge has a real instinct to split the baby in every case that comes before him.”

“Split the baby?”

“Yes. It’s a reference to the Old Testament story of King Solomon and two women who were arguing over a baby.”

“I know the story.”

“Okay. Well, lawyers use the phrase ‘split the baby’ to refer to judge-ordered compromises, especially when the compromise isn’t particularly fair or smart. For example, Judge Reilly might think he was compromising by denying the sanctions motion and granting the TRO, but that wouldn’t be a compromise—it would be a total victory for Karl.”

“I see,” Gunnar said slowly. “Yes, I see. So how will you keep this judge from splitting my baby?”

Three monkeys played in the exercise room—two from the control group and one of the test subjects. All three were related and knew each other well. The oldest and largest of the three had been the leader of their troop at the ranch where they’d been raised. He was named Bruce, because he had been the boss of the group—a Bruce Springsteen reference that Kim was too young to understand without explanation. The younger two monkeys were cousins and Bruce’s nephews. They weren’t twins, but they were so similar that they had been named Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Tweedledee had been injected with the drug; Tweedledum (Bruce’s cage mate) was in the control group.

Kim looked forward to playtime today. She and David had spent an hour on the phone last night talking about medical school. He had just received his final grades from his first year, and they had not been good. Now she sipped her chai latte and explained the situation to Dr. Chatterton. “So he’s really stressed,” she concluded. “He’s afraid he’s going to flunk out next semester. What do you think? Does it get easier after your first year, or is he in real trouble?”

“The first year is always a big adjustment,” replied Dr. Chatterton. “You’re not in college anymore, that’s for sure. I don’t think I slept more than twenty hours a week during my first year. Does it get easier after that?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. There are a lot of people who don’t come back after the first year, but most of those who do, graduate.”

“I’ll tell him that. Maybe it will calm him down some. He’s a great guy and everything, but he can be kinda intense sometimes. So, do you have any more words of wisdom for him?”

“Yeah. If he flunks out of med school, there’s always law school.”

Kim laughed. “I want to cheer him up, not make him shoot himself.”

“Then you may not want to mention the law-school thing. Just tell him he’ll get through it.”

Half an hour later, Dr. Chatterton headed back to her office to take care of some paperwork, and Kim entered the exercise room to retrieve the monkeys. Bruce went back into his cage without much complaining, but Tweedledee and Tweedledum were still playing and needed a lot of coaxing. Technically, Kim should have checked the ID number tattooed on each animal’s abdomen to make sure the right monkey went in the right cage, but the numbers were hard to read and the animals didn’t like it. Besides, Kim was pretty sure she could tell them apart.

Judge Reilly held his emergency-motion call at 8:30 a.m., so Ben and Gunnar arrived in his courtroom at 8:15 and sat on the hard wooden benches while the judge worked through the cases ahead of theirs. At 9:05, the clerk announced, “Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals versus Bjornsen.”

Bert Siwell and Ben approached the bench and made their appearances. Karl and Gunnar Bjornsen were both in the courtroom and moved to the front benches when the case was called, nodding curtly to each other as they sat down. “Good morning, Counsel,” said the judge. “Between the two of you, you’ve filed no less than
eleven
emergency motions. Let’s start at the top of the stack. You’ve both moved for TROs. Mr. Siwell, you filed your motion first, so I’ll let you argue first.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Bert Siwell was a large man in height, width, voice, and ego. Thirty years ago, he had played right tackle at Northwestern. He had been a good offensive lineman for the same reason he was a good litigator: he was quick and could overpower most opponents. Also, he knew how to play dirty without getting caught. “My client, Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals, is asking for something that is both simple and crucial: it wants its trade secrets back. That’s all we want in this motion.

“Some people take Post-its or paperclips home from the office. Gunnar Bjornsen may have taken a multibillion-dollar secret. If he did, his former employer is entitled to get it back, and that’s what we ask for in our injunction papers. In the meantime, though, we’re entitled to know what he’s got. We’re not even asking for him to give anything back at this point. We just need him to disclose what information walked out the door with him. But he won’t do it.

“Why won’t he do it? That’s a very good question. Maybe he just wants to keep my client in the dark so he can negotiate a better severance package than he deserves. Maybe. But maybe the real reason is that he plans to sell my client’s secrets to a competitor. If that’s his plan, we need to know right now exactly what secrets he took from my client. We ask for a TRO requiring him to make that disclosure immediately.”

The judge looked at Ben. “Thank you, Your Honor,” Ben said. “This is going to be easier than I thought. My client has no intention of disclosing any secrets to any third parties. We’ll agree to a TRO to that effect. What—”

“So why won’t he disclose what secrets he took?” asked Siwell.

Ben suppressed his irritation. It was rude for one lawyer to interrupt another lawyer’s argument or speak directly to his opponent rather than to the judge. Ben glanced up at Judge Reilly, who showed no sign of intervening. Ben continued his argument. “Mr. Siwell’s TRO motion doesn’t just request a list of the information my client allegedly took; he wants the information itself. What Mr. Siwell is asking for is to have his entire case handed to him on a silver platter. The whole purpose of his lawsuit is to force my client to turn over information. A TRO is not intended to be a way to shortcut the litigation process; it is meant to prevent an imminent harm, a wrong that is about to be done and cannot be undone by a later order of the Court. The only thing Mr. Siwell has pointed to that fits that description is the claimed risk that my client will tell the company’s secrets to a competitor. Mr. Bjornsen won’t do that. In fact, he’s willing to agree to an order requiring him not to. That takes care of the plaintiff’s TRO motion. Now—”

“No it doesn’t,” interjected Siwell. “You must not have heard me before—why won’t your client disclose what secrets he took?”

Ben smiled thinly and kept his eyes on the judge. “That brings us to our TRO motion. Mr. Siwell thinks my client has a multibillion-dollar secret. Is that the sort of information that should be entrusted to an embezzler?”

Karl stirred in his seat and muttered something under his breath. Siwell was apoplectic. “Your Honor, I object! This isn’t argument, it’s slander! Mr. Corbin can’t—”

“Your Honor, please!” said Ben, raising his voice over Siwell’s.

Judge Reilly held up his hand. “Counsel, you can respond when Mr. Corbin is finished.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” continued Ben. “We moved for a TRO because there is substantial evidence, summarized in Gunnar Bjornsen’s affidavit, that there is some questionable accounting going on at Bjornsen Pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, it appears that the problem goes all the way to the top—senior management was either cooking the books or knew that they were being cooked. That has to stop immediately. We ask the Court to order that auditors be appointed to review the company’s books and monitor all financial transactions until the completion of the trial on our permanent-injunction motion. Appointment of auditors is particularly crucial if Your Honor is considering granting the plaintiff’s TRO motion; there’s no telling how much damage current management will do to the company if they get their hands on what Mr. Siwell says is a multibillion-dollar new product. We respectfully request that the Court enter the proposed order submitted with defendant’s TRO motion.”