Impact (12 page)

“That's foul,” someone mutters.

“So let's make sure discovery goes ahead,” Hawthorne instructs into the awed silence. “And we hang on to the punitive claim until they've produced the documents.”

After a brief hesitation, Martha nods. “That was Dan's baby,” she says carefully.

He doesn't know how much the troops know about Dan's defection, suspects as is usual in bureaucracies the troops know more than the commander about internal unrest. “Well, now it's someone else's. You decide.”

She whispers to the young man at her side. Mike is his name, Hawthorne seems to remember. As they exchange smiles, he waits for Martha to continue through her list.

“SurfAir,” Martha says.

Hawthorne nods. “A death case came in yesterday—a mother and a preschool child, the client the surviving husband. We need to get a fee agreement to him.”

“Not much money for a mother and child in a nondependent context,” the young man Mike observes laconically.

Martha rebuts him quickly. “That's not true anymore; the women's movement is forcing courts to place a reasonable monetary value on homemakers and children. We got three hundred thousand for a housewife in the Cessna case, and in New Orleans they just awarded two fifty to a parent for loss of a minor child.”

“Doesn't matter, anyway,” Hawthorne adds. “We should have several more plaintiffs coming in, so we can afford to take some marginals.”

Martha shakes her head. “I don't know about that. Somehow Scallini's people got through to the hotel where SurfAir whisked the friends and families. Our guy in the clerk's office told me Vic just dropped a billion-dollar case in the hopper. The papers will be full of it tomorrow, and that'll get Vic a dozen more cases, easy. He's serious about this one, evidently; a lawyer in San Mateo called this morning to tell me he represented the wife of a SurfAir victim. He asked what we paid in referral fees. When I told him thirty percent, he said Scallini had offered fifty. When I wouldn't let him jack me up, he decided Vic was his boy.”

“The buzzards are gathering,” Hawthorne mumbles. “And Dan's gone off to join them.”

His mind dwells on Vic Scallini, scourge of legitimate tort practitioners. Lecher, alcoholic, ambulance chaser—over the years, Scallini had generated more bad publicity for the personal-injury bar than the rest of the field combined, yet the ignorant and uninformed still flocked to him, as often as not only to see their claims vanish in the muck of Vic's slovenly and haphazard practice, where overworked and underpaid nonentities labored mightily just to keep the statutes of limitation in mind.

“We should get out a choice-of-law memo in SurfAir,” Martha says in the middle of the depression fostered by his colleague's vast venality.

The question jerks Hawthorne back to business. “Right.”

Martha looks left. “Mike?”

“Okay,” the young man says.

Hawthorne decides to coach. “Normally, California law would apply in SurfAir, since the
lex loci delicti
is here and most of the victims are California residents, which makes California chiefly concerned over how the injured and the heirs are compensated. But another jurisdiction may be better as far as damages, particularly punitive damages, which California doesn't allow in death cases. Check pre-impact terror, too—a Texas jury just awarded twenty thousand for two seconds' worth. I don't think there are any contacts with Texas in this case, but Florida allows recovery for pain and suffering for the heirs even if the victim dies, which California does not, and a recent case awarded one point eight million in the death of a teenager. Florida is where the engines were manufactured, so that's a hook, but be careful. Before you suggest an alternative to California, see how close the state's legislature is to passing a tort-limitation law that will throw it all in an uproar. Give Martha a memo on all the considerations.” He looks at Martha. “Anything else?”

“You want to file a complaint yet?”

“No, but we should file a federal tort claim on the theory the control tower screwed up, which is almost certainly the case if it was a midair or a near miss. They reuse those tower tapes every fifteen days, so we need to get an order preserving them.”

Martha nods.

“Let's leave it there for now. Thanks for your attention, group.” He pauses, senses they are expecting more from him, and continues when he realizes what it is. “As you know, Mr. Griffin is no longer with this office. If you were doing work for him, see Martha for your new assignment. If any of you knows anything about his plans, I hope you'll let Martha know. These things happen. Usually because of money. If any of you gets to feeling underpaid, take a look around at what it takes to keep us going. Then look at the time sheets and compare your contribution with Martha's. If you still feel abused, come see me. No promises to give you a raise; only a promise to listen to your tale of woe.” He pauses for some response. When he hears none, he says, “Okay. That's it.”

In the back of the room, a hand goes up. “Where do you see this firm ten years from now, Mr. Hawthorne?”

He is startled first by the young man's candor and then by the sadistic gleam in Martha's eye when he silently asks her to put a stop to it. “Well,” he stammers when Martha fails to lift a finger, “I hope we'll be known as the preeminent personal-injury firm on the West Coast.”

“You're not planning to retire anytime soon, are you?”

“I can't afford to.” He hears laughs from those who think he is joking.

“If you got hit by a truck, who would be in charge?”

The questioner is Mike. Hawthorne dares a glance at Martha. “I really haven't thought about it much—I try to keep out of the way of both trucks and ex-wives.” When no one laughs, he blurts the only answer the circumstance allows. “Martha would be, I imagine. Most people think she's in charge already.”

Another hand goes up and its owner doesn't wait for an invitation to speak. “Some people say the tort system won't even exist ten years from now. What's your response?”

The question is impudent and smooth—Hawthorne frowns at the affront. “I know that's what some people say, but if you look into it, you'll find those people are politically naïve or deeply biased. Inefficiency, greed, waste, everything that can be blamed on tort lawyers has been. And there are abuses, I don't deny it. But what's the alternative? No money for pain and suffering? No punitive damages for willful and wanton misconduct? Restricting contingent fees until only incompetents can make a living representing injured people? Why should the companies that cause these horrible injuries not be required to pay for them?”

When no one responds to his rhetoric, he plunges ahead.

“The law professors want tort litigation replaced by a social service agency, like the workman's compensation boards. Sounds great? Well, tell me a single social service agency that is adequately funded. Food stamps—slashed. Disabled kicked off the Social Security rolls right and left. If you
really
analyze the reform proposals, you find that what they do is force someone who's been injured to reduce his standard of living to the poverty level merely because he was unlucky enough to get his brain scrambled by a reckless driver.”

Pausing for breath, Hawthorne looks at his audience. In a pool of rapt attention, he warms to the subject.

“What's true is, the assault on the tort system is the product of a multimillion-dollar publicity campaign by the insurance companies to sell the idea that there is something wrong with the civil justice system in this country. The first thing to say is that the supposed litigation explosion is a lie—tort filings between 1978 and 1984 increased at half the rate of the population.

“The second thing to say is that the size of verdicts has been grossly overstated—even the service that provides the numbers says they're being misused in the insurance propaganda.

“The third thing is that the crisis, if any, is over. Insurance profits in the first quarter of 1986 were up a thousand percent; for the entire year the profits of property/casualty carriers more than doubled. Was the crisis real in the first place? Well, in the so-called crisis years of 1982 to 1985, when premiums were going through the roof, twelve of the largest casualty insurers increased the cash compensation to their CEOs by fifty percent.

“It's the insurance industry, not the lawyers, that should be reformed—they're not regulated by the states and are exempt from federal antitrust laws and the scrutiny of the Federal Trade Commission. The exemptions should be cancelled. State approval should be required for premium increases of ten percent or more. The industry should have to reveal how much premium and investment income it earns each year and how much it pays in claims, so its rates can be evaluated. The giant reinsurance companies—primarily, Lloyd's of London—that earn half their income from American companies and call all the shots in major disaster litigation should be regulated as well. And the states should hire enough people to do the job—right now, Aetna alone employs more actuaries than all the states combined.”

He stands up and begins to pace. “Tort reform will be a cruel joke on every consumer in America. How do I know the proposed reforms won't help? Simple. Canada enacted virtually every proposal the insurance companies are pushing and the situation up there hasn't changed at all—premiums are outrageous and risky operations can't get coverage.”

He stops for breath, then smiles. “That's the bad news. The good news is that compromise may be coming. A group is getting together in Sacramento next month—representatives of doctors, lawyers, consumer groups, Common Cause, insurance people, manufacturers, chambers of commerce—to try to come up with a treaty that will solve some of the problems or at least keep the various interests from cutting each other's throats. If everyone gives a little, maybe we'll come up with a compromise. I'm going as a representative of the California Trial Lawyers, and I'll know more about how things look after the meeting. But for now, the short answer to your question is that the personal-injury business isn't dead yet, and if the people of this state have any sense, it never will be. Okay?”

Stunned by the exegesis, Hawthorne's assistants file silently from the room and leave him to his labors and his lingering thoughts of treason.

At some point Keith Tollison fell asleep. It was some time after Laura had stopped crying; after he had gone out in search of a liquor store and returned with a pint of bourbon they had shared until it vanished; after they had tacitly forsworn the question each had yearned to ask, which was whether the plane crash was the answer to a prayer the other one had offered.

He sensed even before he opened his eyes that Laura was no longer beside him. Disoriented, for a moment he thought the previous evening had been a nightmare, but the shiny surfaces of the room and the rush of water from behind the mirrored door indicated otherwise. He propped the pillows against the headboard and hiked himself against them.

The room was dark, shaded by a thick drape across the single window, smelling of sleep and booze and cleaning agents. Images of the evening slipped in and out of focus, as did the shape of his desires. As he considered whether to leave Laura long enough to find a drugstore, the mirrored door opened and she appeared before him, wrapped in a sheet.

“Good morning,” she said.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Well, a little hung over, actually. I usually don't drink so much so fast.”

He glanced at the rim of sunlight around the window curtain. “What time is it?”

“Ten-fifteen.” She smiled warmly. “You slept like a baby. You must have been exhausted.”

“I should go somewhere and clean up.” He rolled off the bed and sagged into the chair beneath the swag lamp.

“There's everything you need right here.” She gestured to the bathroom at her back. “Those little gift packs these places give you nowadays. While you take a shower and get dressed, I'll go to the lobby and see what's going on.”

“You haven't heard anything at all?”

She shook her head. “They came by at eight and told me to stay in my room unless I wanted to go to the coffee shop for breakfast. I didn't feel like looking an egg in the eye, so here I am.” For the first time of the morning, a flutter in her voice hinted of tumult.

He stood up. “Wait for me. I'll just be a minute.”

“It's all right. I'll just—”

“Wait
for me.”

Ten minutes later he emerged, showered and shaved. Laura waited for him to tie his tie. Only when she joined him in the mirror's reflection did he appreciate their flair—he in his best blue suit, she in a scoop-necked gown that would have worn well on a princess and wore so well on Laura Donahue it was, in the circumstances, arguably indecent.

She joined his thought. “Well, they can't say we didn't deal with it in style.” With the final word her tears returned, and it was only after a ten-minute repair of face and fortitude that they made it to the lobby.

The desk clerk was new, dressed nattily in SurfAir blue and white, composed yet compassionate. Tollison waited while she consoled an elderly Oriental couple who seemed too small to have problems so far beyond their scale. After a final plea for solace, the couple drifted off, their faces frozen by withheld grief.

When they were gone, the desk clerk turned his way. “I wish there was something adequate I could do,” she said, her eyes flattened with frustration. “In a way it's easier when there are no survivors. It's the not knowing that tortures them.” She took a sip from a glass that held what looked like orange juice. “How can I help you?”

“I'm trying to learn the procedure,” Tollison explained. “What are we supposed to do at this point?”

“Are you a family member of a passenger on flight 617?”