Impasse (2 page)

“You've got the best seat if someone comes in and shoots the place up. Is that why you picked it?”

“Excuse me?”

“The brick half-wall will protect you. All you need to do is drop down behind it. Anyone bursting in here would come through that right-hand door. Your exit is down here at the end of the row on the left. If it happens, you're golden. My seat's next best.”

That was the extent of the conversation. Stu had turned his attention back to the lecture. By the end of the period he had scribbled seven pages of notes. He glanced over at Clay's paper. The only writing was a diagram of the room with arrows pointing to the two exits and
X
s through a dozen seats nearest the right-hand door.

The Bluestone's rear stairwell was dim and echoed, and Stu's footfalls were fifteen pounds heavier than they'd been when he'd left the DA's office with his tail between his legs. The stairway rail was loose and rattled as he used it to pull himself up the steps.

I need to work out more
.

He thought the same thing every day, but he never did work out more. He wasn't
un
healthy, and his wife liked him “fine” the way he was. Katherine had said so just that morning as she wished him a happy fortieth birthday.

“Forty.” He said it aloud to see what it sounded like. It sounded old, and as he trudged up the back stairs of the low-rent office building in a cheap brown suit, it echoed through the stairwell like the voice of a ghostly harbinger of ominous tidings.

After law school Stu had sought his first job at the Bristol County District Attorney's Office. His grades were good—top 10 percent—and his criminal coursework and internships had prepared him for precisely such work. He wrote his r
é
sum
é
to fit the position exactly, and he'd prepared night and day for the nerve-rattling mock trial they'd put him through at the end of the four-day interview and callback process, practicing his arguments in the mirror, the shower, the car, and one final time outside the courthouse before he went in. The entire office full of experienced assistant district attorneys sat in a jury box staring at him while two senior attorneys put him through his paces, objecting during his faux direct examination of the fake witnesses, and moving to dismiss his entire case at the close of his case in chief. Worst of all, Malloy, the elected prosecutor, acted as judge.

He'd made a titanic effort and, somewhat to his surprise, he'd won the job over nineteen other impressive men and women. Soon he was standing in front of juries trying misdemeanors—driving under the influence and minor domestic assaults mostly—and it didn't take him long to earn a solid reputation as a well-prepared and confident trial attorney.

A year later Clay arrived like a couch-surfing fraternity pal. Only, Stuart had hardly known him then. He showed up in the lobby, unannounced, wearing a sweatshirt and asking the receptionist for “Stu, a good friend of mine from law school.”

“Hey, Stu,” he said when Stuart stuck his head out through the security door to see who was asking for him. “Good to see you! Aren't you going to invite me in?”

Clay said he was in New England for a few days. He'd remembered Stu from law school and had heard he was practicing in the area. “And what a coincidence,” Clay explained, because he was looking to work in a DA's office too, and he was just starting to send out r
é
sum
é
s. Could he speak to Stu's boss while he was in town? Clay talked fast, and somehow they'd ended up in Malloy's office, yucking it up with him about Oregon football and NCAA sanctions. Before he knew it, Stu was explaining to Clay about the mock trial, which Malloy had said they could throw together for the next day. It was a surprise, and with one day to prepare, Stu was certain it would be a disaster, but Clay insisted that he could interview immediately.

“Stuart can help me,” he joked. “And loan me a suit.”

Clay took Stu out for Thai food that night and paid even though he had student loans. He joked that it was his “thirty-dollar bribe.”

Stu offered advice. “You'll want to research the areas of search and seiz—”

Clay leaned forward over his green curry. “Cut the crap, Stu. What are the answers?”

When Stu hesitated, Clay pressed him.

“You said yourself it's impossible to prepare in one day, and I know you wouldn't leave a classmate standing there with his dick hanging out, would you?”

Stu wasn't sure exactly what Clay meant, but he certainly didn't want it to happen.

The objections were standard—hearsay, relevance, and a demand for an offer of proof—all basic evidentiary rules easily dealt with if a guy knew they were coming, and Stu knew exactly which ones were coming. The motion to dismiss was trickier—failure to establish jurisdiction. This was handled more subtly, through a request that the judge take judicial notice of the location of the road upon which the fictitious officer had stopped the fictitious car. Most new lawyers wouldn't think of it. Nor would Clay, had Stu not warned him, but he did.

With one day's prep and Stu's help, Clay got the same offer for which Stu had prepared his entire law school career. The fact that Clay's grades were mediocre didn't matter. His transcript didn't even arrive until after the paperwork was signed with personnel and he was already screwing one of the secretaries. It didn't matter that he'd only taken one criminal course, or that he had no internships involving crime. He'd simply buddied up to the boss and then impressed the entire office with his ability to think on his feet—with a little help from Stu, or, more accurately, a little cheating. It was a well-spent thirty dollars.

Six years later, when the Butz disaster happened, Stu had nowhere to go. About that time, Clay unexpectedly turned in his resignation. “I just need a change,” he said. “Five years under the fucking microscope is enough for me.” With a good bit of prodding and cajoling, Clay convinced Stu not to give up on life or law and to start over in private practice with him. Katherine lamented Stu's demotion as much or more than he did. His rise in the DA's office had been steady, and the social status they were beginning to attain about town was considerable. They were invited to political events and charity auctions, where Katherine remembered everyone's name and distributed polite hugs like candy. Everyone had agreed that he would have the top spot one day, and Katherine had talked him up the most.

Instead he'd slunk off in shame, hung out his shingle, and had his name engraved on Clay's ridiculous lawn sign. He'd only had the energy to demand one deal-breaker stipulation: the firm would do no criminal defense work. None. Zero. Period. And with that they'd begun their struggle in private practice without government medical benefits, pensions, or paid vacations.

Stu blinked and realized he'd been standing on the cement landing outside his office for several minutes. Just standing. Thinking. Remembering. Wondering what might have been, while in front of him stood the worn, ill-fitting, painted-over door to what was. He reached out and jiggled the handle until it opened.

“Can we get that fixed?” he asked their all-in-one receptionist, secretary, and paralegal, Pauline. She was a plain woman from across the New Bedford-Fairhaven Bridge in Fairhaven and dressed in a loud fuchsia dress. Her body was lumpy, and the edges of her shapeless face were defined only by the white base makeup she caked on like a mime's mask; otherwise, her face would have melted directly into her neck. She'd been married since high school. Three kids. Good at her job. She knew how to do some legal research. More important, she had previously worked at the courthouse. Ergo, she knew the judge's clerks and their labyrinthine system of document formatting and filing.

“I think there's a screwdriver in the miscellaneous drawer,” Pauline replied, tilting her head toward a bank of aging cabinets without looking up.

“Can't you call Sitzman?”

“We get one hundred dollars off our rent if we don't call the landlord for thirty days, and we're on day twenty-four.”

Stu put down his car keys, loosened his tie, and headed for the cabinet. He fished around inside and came up with the screwdriver, an extra from his own home that he'd donated to the cause.

“Clay's in his office,” Pauline mentioned as Stu passed her on his way back to the broken door.

Stu glanced at the clock: ten minutes after eight. Clay was never in his office before nine. “What's the occasion?”

“I don't know.” She paused dramatically. “Maybe it's the letter we received from Shubert, Garvin and Ross.”

The Molson case!
Stu thought. Their best chance yet at breaking out of their scrape-and-hustle private practice funk. Two weeks earlier Stu had sent a demand letter outlining the reasons that Shubert, Garvin and Ross should settle for an amount that might just fix their broken elevator and door.
If things go right, it could buy us an entirely new elevator, and perhaps a new building to go around it.

He'd been checking the mail every day for a response and, apparently, Clay was sitting in his office casually mulling it over with his morning coffee.

“Good news?”

Pauline gave him a coy shrug.

 

CHAPTER 2

The Molson case was a hot potato that had bounced around town, with at least two other more prominent firms passing on it. The client, Sylvia Molson, had been crossing in front of a Mazda Miata stopped at an intersection when the defendant, Yuri Blastos, struck the Miata from the rear with his hulking Nissan Armada, a vehicle so big it was named after a fleet of ships. It catapulted the diminutive sports car onto Sylvia, snapping her neck at the second vertebra. He'd been drinking, and fault was easy to establish. The defendant, however, was judgment proof—he had no money. He was also uninsured. Sylvia, a yoga instructor and mother of two, was suddenly in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Her own auto insurance paid her the limits of her policy for an uninsured motorist, but it would not be nearly enough for her care.

But Sylvia was a chipper, optimistic woman. She'd wheeled into Buchanan, Stark & Associates and been undeterred by the broken elevator; she yelled up the back stairwell until Pauline had come down to find her stuck at the bottom of the steps. Stu had carried her up the stairs himself, then hurried off to review the case while Clay signed her on as a client.

Stu wasn't optimistic that he would find something two other teams of lawyers had missed, especially because Buchanan, Stark hadn't dealt with many personal injury cases. Their biggest had been a severed finger. Lost digits were assigned different values under the law—a thumb being the amputated digit jackpot—and all they'd gotten was a measly pinky.

The police reports said that Blastos had consumed eight beers over three hours and had blown a .11 on the breathalyzer machine, well over the .08 legal limit. He hadn't slowed at the intersection, judging from the absence of skid marks prior to the point of impact. He was at fault, no doubt.

Blastos worked as an inspector for Septi-Spect, a small company that inspected septic systems. Septi-Spect was, in turn, owned by Jennings Plumbing, an international company. Jennings had deep pockets—they could pay for a catastrophic injury. But the state police report did not attribute any fault to Jennings. Blastos was driving his own car at the time of the collision, not an inspection vehicle. He was not on his way to or from an inspection site. According to the report, he was neither working as an employee at the time nor acting on the company's behalf. In fact, he'd gotten off work three hours earlier, and the company had a strict policy against drinking when their drivers were working. They were 100 percent not responsible for any accident caused by off-duty drinking. No doubt. Complete dead end. Multiple prior lawyers had said so.

But Stu hadn't given up, or, more accurate, he hadn't had enough other work to keep himself otherwise occupied. He made a motion to obtain Blastos's cell phone records, even though it was well established that his company phone was hanging on a hook at the office at the time of the crash, where he put it every day when he left work.

But Stu didn't request the man's
company
phone records. He requested his
private
cell phone records. Stu didn't even know if there was a private cell phone. It turned out there was. And there was one call on the day of the collision. It came in at 5:15 p.m., thirty-two seconds before Sylvia Molson lost the use of all her limbs. When Stu received the cell records, he called the number. The dispatcher at Septi-Spect answered.

Bingo!

Although Septi-Spect had a long-standing written policy against drinking and driving, it did
not
yet have a policy against talking and driving. They'd meant to update their guidelines, they said, but hadn't gotten around to it. In other words, they were aware of the problem and did nothing about it until it was too late for Sylvia Molson. To make matters worse, they had a custom of calling their drivers en route to sites in order to alert them to inspection appointment changes. They were making just such a call to Blastos to tell him about an appointment change the next morning.

Bingo again!

It still wasn't enough. There was the alcohol problem. Did the Septi-Spect cell phone call cause the wreck or did the alcohol? If it was the alcohol, then Blastos owed, and he had no money. If it was the cell phone, Jennings, Inc. and their millions in assets could be tapped for the cost of Sylvia's injuries.

This was where joint and several liability came in, a legal principle that law nerds, like Stu, found fascinating. Stu named both Blastos and Jennings, Inc. in the lawsuit. If the jury found Jennings partially liable, say even 1 percent, Blastos and Jennings would be responsible for the entire verdict jointly. Normally, Blastos would have to pay 99 percent and Jennings 1 percent. However, the joint and several rule was designed to make the plaintiff whole. If Blastos couldn't pay his 99 percent—and he certainly couldn't—then Jennings was responsible for paying the entire amount to Sylvia. Jennings, in turn, was permitted to go after Blastos for indemnification. But so long as Sylvia got paid, they could damn well take it out of his turd-inspecting wages for the next few centuries, as far as Stu was concerned.