Great necessities call out great virtues.
—Abigail Adams
Almost as soon as Judge Don Stephens admits Richard Middleton and Charlie Speer to serve as counsel of record in the hog farm cases, he finds reason to doubt his decision. Mona Wallace is asking permission to withdraw from the case. Her motion is antiseptic, bare-bones. She offers no explanation, doesn’t even dangle a hint about her reasons. But her request is proper under the ethics rules. All of her clients have consented, and Wade Smith’s firm has agreed to step in as local counsel. Ordinarily, such a motion is a formality, granted as a matter of course. But this is not an ordinary case. The prospect of allowing it to proceed without Mona at the helm gives the judge considerable pause. He wants to talk to her before he decides. As he did back in October, he calls the lawyers to a hearing in Raleigh.
The summons from Judge Stephens catches Mona by surprise. Honestly, she isn’t happy about it. But then, she isn’t happy about the whole situation. Over the past ten months, she and her team have given the case the fullest measure of their devotion. They have invested thousands of hours of labor, made numerous trips down east, had countless conversations with the clients, built a digital map of hog country, and helped draft more than two dozen complaints, all without compensation. That is the way Mona rolls. The clients don’t owe her a dime until the defendant pays. When she thinks of Smithfield now, she doesn’t just see Brandon Taylor lying beside his tanker truck. She sees Elsie Herring on her porch and Violet Branch in her favorite chair. Much longer and these women would become like family to her. She can’t stand the thought of walking away from them. But she has no choice.
Her relationship with Middleton and Speer has broken down.
Her only concern now is the clients’ well-being. With a Chinese-owned, multibillion-dollar company on the other side, the neighbors need a legal team who can wield the sling with the facility of David. That is what she told the clients when she asked permission to withdraw. She told them they could trust Wade Smith to see the case through to the end. When she filed the motion to withdraw with client consent, she never expected Judge Stephens to push back.
Now she doesn’t know what to think.
She takes John Hughes and Linda Wike with her to Raleigh. They are quiet on the drive, pensive like she is, absorbed in their own private worlds. At the Wake County Courthouse, they find the gallery mostly empty. As before, Mark Anderson is there with his retinue from McGuireWoods, representing Smithfield. The venerable Wade Smith is present with his brother, Roger. He’s also brought along Hill Allen, a litigator at his firm. Rounding out the group are Middleton and Speer. Mona greets everyone amicably, as if she’s genuinely pleased to see them. Then she takes a seat at the plaintiffs’ table with John Hughes.
In time, Judge Stephens ascends to the bench, looking uncharacteristically grave. He cuts to the chase. “I normally sign these pro forma, but I ordered this matter before the court because one of the primary reasons that I allowed the out-of-state attorneys to join the case was that Mona Lisa Wallace and her firm were in it.”
The judge casts a glance at Mona over his glasses. “Your firm is one of the few firms in this state that I thought could prosecute this case, the enormity of it, the complexity of it, the expense of it, and serve the plaintiffs well. So, if I allow the motion for Mona Lisa Wallace and John Hughes to get out of the case, then I’ll have to reevaluate the original decision I made allowing the out-of-state attorneys to participate.”
Mark Anderson has kept his knives sharp since the last hearing. Sensing an opening, he’s the first into the fray. He renews Smithfield’s objection to Middleton and Speer.
Judge Stephens interrupts him. He doesn’t need to hear Smithfield’s position again. He wants to hear from Mona.
Mona chooses her words with care. “I want you to know that we believe in these cases. Nothing has changed. We just filed a death case for a young man who breathed hydrogen sulfide at one of Smithfield’s plants and died. We are going to continue to do everything we can, as we’ve always done, for the citizens of North Carolina. We want to do what is right.”
She takes a breath, then offers the sketch of an explanation. It is the only statement she will ever make about the matter, even years later. “After the hearing, some circumstances arose that caused me to be unable to work with co-counsel. I’m simply not comfortable being with co-counsel. And by withdrawing, I certainly would never forgive myself if anything I did would be detrimental to the clients, because we believe in the clients. We love the clients. We had six to eight lawyers on the case. We had a staff. We worked tirelessly. But I simply can’t work with co-counsel.”
The judge regards her thoughtfully, pondering, no doubt, the unspoken remainder. But he doesn’t press her for more. “All right. Mr. Smith, do you have some role here?”
Wade Smith rises to his feet, looking slightly pained. It’s an awkward moment for him. But he is an old pro. He does the rhetorical two-step with panache, affirming his belief that the out-of-state lawyers are the most qualified in the country to handle this kind of litigation.
Judge Stephens doesn’t buy it. Cases of this magnitude are unique, and he isn’t convinced that Hill Allen has enough experience to manage it.
The judge turns his bespectacled gaze on Middleton and Speer, who have been sitting quietly while others debate their future. “You want to be heard?” he asks.
Charlie Speer decides to ride the bull. He pleads his résumé, all the good he did for the people of Missouri, the consent decree he and Middleton obtained from the court, the settlement they negotiated for their 285 clients. “These are the only cases I do,” he explains. “I don’t do med mal. I don’t sue doctors. I don’t do car wrecks. I feel very passionate about this from a private property rights standpoint. I think that’s near and dear to everybody in America—conservative and liberal. Frankly, the country was founded on those principles, and juries get it.”
“I understand,” Judge Stephens replies. “Well, it’s kind of a dilemma for me. But not really. If Mona Lisa Wallace can’t work with you, I can’t work with you. It’s as simple as that. I’m going to vacate my order allowing out-of-state counsel to join the case.”
The silence in the courtroom is deafening. Mona is thunderstruck, as are John Hughes and Linda Wike. None of them has ever heard a judge say something like that from the bench.
“Ms. Wallace,” says Judge Stephens, “are you prepared to represent the plaintiffs now?”
The judge is staring at Mona expectantly, his eyes at once buoyant and grave. He has offered her a tabula rasa, a blank slate. But this gift is freighted with burden, the commission commensurate with the cost. A mass action of this magnitude against a corporation with parachutes for pockets and the Chinese government for a benefactor could take five years or more to resolve. The expenses alone will run into the millions, and the attorney time could approach one hundred thousand hours. She isn’t worried about her team. They are equal to the task. And the price tag, while hefty, isn’t too steep. That’s one of the blessings of her success—the freedom it has given her to take big risks, to follow her heart into the breach, to take on causes that others have thought lost. She’s inclined to say yes, but she isn’t the only one at the table. If she accepts the charge, there are others who must come along with her.
“Your Honor,” she says, “I’d like to talk to my law partner, Bill Graham, and I’d like to talk to the lawyers who are committed…. But, yes, sir, we’d be willing to consider that.”
“Well,” says the judge, “right now, you are counsel of record in this case. I’m going to give you thirty days to consider your motion to withdraw as counsel.”
Mona nods compliantly, thinking that she doesn’t just have to talk to Bill. She has to talk to her husband. She has to talk to her daughters. Her career has always been a family affair, and a case like this will test them all. Companies like Smithfield don’t just try to defeat their opponents.
They try to destroy them.
The days that follow are consumed by conversation. Bill Graham isn’t difficult to convince. He’s a buccaneer at heart, a smooth-talking, hard-charging man of the people who even made a Cinderella run for the governor’s mansion back in 2008. Mona’s family, on the other hand, is less sanguine. Whitney shares her mother’s passion for the cause, but she’s candid about the downside. What if a jury agrees that the pork barons have screwed over the neighbors for twenty years but can’t decide how to value the wrong? When a person dies on the highway, it’s easy to calculate his lost earnings. The concept of pain and suffering is a bit of a conjurer’s trick, yet juries figure it out. But a nuisance claim? For hog shit sprayed in the air? The harm is disgusting but unquantifiable. It’s a Hail Mary claim. If the jury fumbles on the numbers, they could succeed on the moral question, but lose on damages. How much is Mona willing to spend if she could win verdicts in all twenty-six cases and still walk away with nothing?
Mona takes the point, but she can’t get the plaintiffs out of her head. Their stories are a part of her now. What is the price of clean air? What is the value of uncontaminated water? What is the dollar equivalent of human dignity, of a woman’s claim to the land her great-grandfather acquired after toiling on it as a slave? Some things are worth the fight no matter the reward.
Her husband Lee’s objection, however, nearly derails her. He remembers the toll that an eleven-year war with Duke Energy took on them. He has never forgotten how close they came to wiping out, how she had to crawl around on her hands and knees in the land records office doing title work just to keep the lights on at the firm. They are a long way from those days now, but she’s almost sixty years old, and he’s a decade older. He’s not worried that Smithfield will break the bank or her spirit. He keeps the Wallace balance sheet and knows the fortress in her soul. He’s concerned that the hog company will steal time from them, years they will never get back.
When Mona and Lee argue, it’s a kind of dance, a pas de deux that they have perfected over thirty years. But their trust in each other is total. When one has a word to say, the other listens. So it is with the hog farm cases, with Judge Stephens’s extraordinary entreaty.
“He really said you’re the only one who could do it?” Lee asks in his gravelly sotto voce.
Mona nods but doesn’t reply. Instead, she watches as he ruminates.
“Hmm.” He’s quiet for a moment longer. “You really want this?”
“These people need our help,” she says with feeling. “They don’t have anybody else.”
At last, his resistance crumbles, and he smiles gently. “Okay.”