Florida Is Murder (Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature) (Florida Mystery Double Feature) (20 page)

“I’m not clear just exactly what right you have to ask me this question, Judge Carson. Carly Austin, and any relationship I may or may not have with her, has nothing to do with you. I know she’s a friend of yours, but that doesn’t give you any right to pry into her personal life.”  His indignation may have been genuine, but it’s hard to say.

“Are you saying that you and Carly have a personal relationship of some kind?” I was incredulous. The possibility not only of Carly having a relationship with Grover, but that she would have a relationship with him and not tell me, was very disturbing. How far was she going to take this rebellious teenager stuff, anyway?

“What I am telling you, Judge Carson, is that it’s none of your business. If you have some professional reason for asking me, which I can’t imagine in the light of the fact that you told Mr. Worthington you would not be asking me ex parte questions about this case, then tell me what it is. If you’re asking me on a personal basis, I don’t have the kind of personal relationship with you that would make me answer that. I don’t intend to discuss my personal relationships with you. If Carly wants to tell you, she will. Why don’t you ask her?”  He was belligerent now, feeling he was on firmer ground.

“I would if I knew where she was.” I snapped.

“Just as I thought,” he snorted. “You’re not as close to her as you’d like to believe. If you don’t have anything else related to the case, Judge, I do have to prepare for my next witness.”  We sat there staring across the desk, measuring each other for a few moments until he got up and left. Without my permission.

If I hadn’t heard the Junior story, I’d have said it wasn’t possible that Carly could be involved in a personal relationship with Christian Grover. Apparently, Carly’s taste in men runs from the unsuitable to the unthinkable. As the corporate counsel of a defendant in the breast implant cases, Carly’s relationship with a notorious plaintiff’s attorney bringing cases against her company would have been enough to get her fired if not disbarred. But then, maybe that’s why she hadn’t told me about it. Being sexually disgraced in a town where everyone knows everything about you might have snuck up on her the first time. She wouldn’t allow that to happen again. She didn’t tell anyone about it. And maybe that’s why she was so reluctant to pass on Dr. Morgan’s theories to her superiors at MedPro. Maybe she didn’t want Dr. Morgan to be right.

Poor kid, what a dilemma. If she chose her job, she lost her lover and if she chose her lover, she lost her job. For Carly, who apparently believed she had nothing else, either choice would be an impossible one. I could feel my Mighty Mouse tendencies creeping up again.

If I gave this information to Ben Hathaway, he would believe he was right, that Carly did kill Dr. Morgan. It wouldn’t be the first time love prevailed over ethics. His view would be cast in concrete. He’d likely arrest Carly on sight. If she’d killed Morgan either for love or money, her motive wouldn’t matter to Chief Hathaway.

And what about Grover?  If he knew where Carly was, that would explain his lack of concern over my questions. Of course, that would be true whether she was dead or alive.

I turned it over and over in my head, and I could think of no reasonable alternative but to tell Hathaway. But if I did that, Carly would be arrested and charged with Dr. Morgan’s murder. I had to concede, at least to myself, that Carly might be involved in a sexual relationship with Grover. He could be wickedly charming and certainly had enough conquests to prove it. Carly had so little experience that the attention of a rich and powerful lawyer like Grover would certainly have impressed her.

But I knew Carly wasn’t capable of murder and the way she reacted when she described the murder scene to me convinced me that she hadn’t killed Dr. Morgan. I thought she knew, or at least she believed she knew who had killed him. But what I didn’t know was why. Did Carly believe Christian Grover killed Michael Morgan?  It was a plausible reason for her behavior. She believed Grover did it and she wanted to protect him. But did he kill Morgan?  And, if he did, why?  Wasn’t Morgan worth more to Grover alive?

This is the point where Mighty Mouse is stuffed into the box and thrown into the ocean. Until I could figure it out, I wasn’t turning over this piece of information to Chief Hathaway or anyone else. He already had enough incriminating evidence anyway. If withholding this piece, which I only suspected and couldn’t confirm until I found Carly, put the final nail in my impeachment coffin, I’d just see how well I could adjust to unemployment.

I recessed the case for the day. The best way to keep my job, help Carly, and confirm or disprove that her lover was a killer, was to do some investigation into the business of breast implant litigation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Tampa, Florida

Thursday 5:20 p.m.

January 21, 1999

Follow the money, Hathaway had said. I asked my law clerk to bring me a list of all of the breast implant cases I had currently pending on my docket together with the names of the attorneys and law firms representing both parties. She ran the request through the computer and had it for me in thirty minutes.

I was surprised at how many cases I actually had. The computer list was ten pages long. I asked her to sort the cases by lawyer and defendant. The list I got back reflected the majority of the plaintiffs’ cases were being handled by Grover and his partner, Fred Johnson. Only one or two other plaintiffs’ firms were represented and then they only handled one or two cases.

On the defense side, there were about five firms listed. The majority of the cases appeared to be against two corporate defendants and one individual, Dr. Michael Morgan. Each of those defendants was represented by E. O’Connell Worthington. The remaining third of the cases against various defendants were represented by as many defense firms.

Most of the cases had been filed more than two years, and involved a husband and wife as plaintiffs. One case was noteworthy, however, because it was a class action, listing the individual names of more than 350 plaintiffs and the defendants were each of the named manufacturers. In the 350 plaintiff case, all of the manufacturers were represented by one defense counsel, E. O’Connell Worthington. Plaintiffs’ counsel was Grover.

I then looked at the trial calendar. Because 95% of all civil cases settle, I schedule about twenty trials a week during my jury term and twenty-five trials a week during non-jury term. There were 10-15 breast implant trials scheduled every jury term for the next twelve months.

The class action case was scheduled for trial six months hence. As many cases as were still on my docket, more than twice that many had been transferred to Federal Court in Georgia to the multi-district litigation being handled by my good friend, Judge Franklin. I had no idea what was happening with Judge Franklin’s cases, and I called him. Miraculously, he was available to speak to me.

After the pleasantries were exchanged, I asked “Steve, what is the status of the breast implant litigation you’re handling these days?”

“We’ve got a global settlement almost completely negotiated. It’s been approved by the plaintiffs and the defendants. I have a couple of motions by insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid to decide and then I’ll make a decision on final approval.”

“What will happen to the settlement if it is not approved?”

“I haven’t let myself think about that,” he laughed. “But, if that should happen, then I guess we’ll start having trials on all four-hundred-forty-thousand claims. I figure I’ll get done about the time I am scheduled to depart the earth, or this will kill me prematurely!”

I laughed politely in commiseration. Judges don’t get paid overtime. “And what will happen after the settlement is approved, if it is?”

“After approval, the only step left is for the individual plaintiffs to submit the medical proof necessary to establish their entitlement to payments under the terms of the settlement grid.”

“Settlement grid?”  I felt like I was learning a foreign language.

“We’ve worked out a system where women with different types of diseases will be paid different sums of money. The least amount a woman will be paid is five-thousand and the most is one million.”

I whistled. “That’s a hell of a lot of money, especially to the lawyers. How will the legal fees be paid?”

“Well on the plaintiff’s side, I want to limit transaction costs to twenty-five percent of the total settlement amount. Of course, the plaintiffs are squealing like stuck pigs over that because they’re used to forty percent fees, exclusive of costs, and the defendants are objecting that it’s too high because they’re the ones that get to pay it.”

The figures he quoted were staggering. Following the money seemed to be the first rule for lawyers as well as murder investigators. “And what about defense attorney fees?”

“Defense attorneys will be paid by the defendants through whatever arrangements the defendants have made for paying them. I haven’t gotten into that because the defendants haven’t asked me to. I don’t see how I could resolve that anyway.”

“There seems to be some new urgency in my courtroom by the plaintiffs to get these cases on for trial. I noticed today that I’ve got ten trials set every jury term for the next twelve months. Do you have any idea why?”

“I think that’s happening all over the country, partly because it pressures the defendants to settle and partly because in the last several months the scientific studies that have come out have all been supporting the defense side. The plaintiffs feel they’re playing beat the clock. If they don’t get their judgments soon, they’re worried the defendants will start trying the causation issues and winning. The defendants are pushing the cases to trial because they think they can win or at least they can make the plaintiffs work and then the plaintiffs’ will get more reasonable. If I don’t get this settlement put to bed pretty soon, I’m afraid the whole thing will fall apart.”

I thanked Steve for his help, and went back to studying my list. I noticed that Grover had all of his cases set for trial, but none of Johnson’s were scheduled. Worthington’s cases were all set, but they ran into the next three years, pretty evenly spaced out. The remaining attorneys seemed to be either behind the curve in requesting trial dates or, perhaps, not prepared for trial.

I did some quick multiplication in my head. If each of the plaintiffs Grover represented would settle, it looked to me like just the cases on my docket would net him attorneys’ fees of $270 million under Florida’s forty- percent fee rule. Of course, he could have made arrangements to accept lower fees based on the volume of business, and he probably owed referral fees to a number of lawyers who had sent him their cases to handle as well. Still, he stood to gain a tremendous sum of money if these cases were all tried and won. Not as much as the tobacco lawyers would get, but certainly enough to keep him and his four ex-wives off food stamps.

More realistically, setting the cases for trial would force settlements and Grover would get the money more quickly. He’d have to discount the value of the claims to settle them now, but he probably wouldn’t have to discount them much, considering the costs of defense. It was curious that Grover’s partner, Johnson, hadn’t done the same math.

And I couldn’t see the advantage to the defendants in pushing the cases to trial. Agreeing to prompt trial dates would put a significant amount of pressure on most of the defense law firms. They just didn’t have the manpower to do the work required to defend multiple, four-week trials. And even if they did have enough lawyers to put on the trials, their other work would suffer. A defense firm that puts all its eggs in one client basket makes big money while it lasts, but can’t withstand the business loss when the cases are over. And why did only two of the plaintiffs’ lawyers want to take their cases to trial now?  Why not the rest of them?  Both Grover and Worthington were in a game of high stakes poker and I wasn’t at all sure which one was holding the better hand.

I began looking at the individual plaintiffs’ names. I was shocked to find so many I recognized as my friends, neighbors and colleagues. I found myself smiling involuntarily every time I recognized the name of a woman whose cosmetic enhancement had not been obvious to me.

From the defense side, Worthington’s two major clients surfaced repeatedly, but there were also quite a few cases against Carly’s company, MedPro, and other defendants, both local and national. I recognized some as George’s investments. Others were common corporate America household names.

I continued looking at the list and trying to discern patterns within it. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I thought something might jump out at me if I just kept looking. It didn’t.

When I looked at my watch, it was 8:00 p.m. and I needed to get home. I put the list out of sight, but not out of mind.

The other thing I couldn’t put off any longer was an extended conversation with Kate. She deserved to know what was going on with Carly, and with me. I stopped by her house on the way home.

I saw Kate standing at her kitchen window when I pulled up in the driveway of her South Tampa home. Kate lives two doors off the Bayshore on Oregon, in an old bungalow type house. It was charming, but it was on a corner lot and the kitchen looked out over a busy side street. Both George and I were worried about just anyone being able to drive up and see her standing in the kitchen, but she said we watch too much television. She wouldn’t even put blinds on the windows. She said she had moved to Florida for sunlight.

I sat in the car and watched Kate work for a while before she noticed I was there. She was a beautiful woman still. She hadn’t changed that much from the first time I saw her, when I was three. I loved her sparkling blue eyes, and her wide, generous smile. She wore her hair in the same French twist she’d always worn, and if there was a little more grey in with the brown, it looked beautiful none the less.

Kate should be married, I thought, for the hundredth time. She’s such a nurturing person. She raised three children of her own, and me since Mom died, without any help from anyone. She’d be a great wife, and a great mother if Carly would just let her be.