Dave Petrosian
I’d arranged to meet Kiah for lunch. For some reason I couldn’t quite define, I’d wanted her to have my pleadings as soon as the ink was dry on them, and handing them to her in person somehow seemed the right thing to do. It wasn’t the standard procedure, obviously. Civil procedure has moved on a bit since every piece of paper had to be delivered personally to the recipient. I could easily have sent the pleadings to her electronically, which nowadays is the usual way of communicating with opposing counsel. If I had been worrying about them being missed, lying overlooked and unopened in her inbox, I could have sent them over to her office by messenger, or I could simply have given her a call to make sure she checked her email. But I did none of those things. I arranged to meet her for lunch. Why? It was because these particular pleadings were so final, I convinced myself eventually. It was because they were about to bring the case of Samantha van Eyck (individually and on behalf of all those similarly situated) v United States to an abrupt end. So what? I got cases dismissed on some procedural ground or other, I got summary judgment against some plaintiff or other, on a regular basis. What made this case so special? What made it special, I admitted to myself eventually, was that I was going to miss it.
Once I got over the humiliation of having to be reminded by my assistant trial attorney of something as basic as the statute of limitations, it didn’t take me long to come up with a plan of action. But how in the hell had I forgotten to ask the first question you ask in any case on the defense side? How old is the cause of action? It’s civil procedure 101.
There’s a limitation period for any civil claim. For claims of this kind against the government the period is six years, which means that if the plaintiff doesn’t file suit within six years of the claim accruing, the claim is barred. It’s a sensible enough rule. As time goes by, witnesses die, or they forget what happened, documents are lost, and it gets progressively more difficult for a court to establish the truth. The longer the delay in bringing suit, the harder it is. So the law imposes a burden on plaintiffs not to let the grass grow. It’s not a harsh burden: six years is more than enough in any normal case for a plaintiff to get her act together, hire a lawyer, and file a claim. If she didn’t know the claim had accrued, the limitation period can be extended to run from the time when she did know. So there’s little excuse for missing the deadline. All the same it happens pretty often, usually because of negligence either on the part of the plaintiff or on the part of her lawyer. When it happens in a case in which my office is defending, we ask the court to dismiss the case, and they do. It’s a routine occurrence, and Samantha van Eyck was about to go the same way.
I think the reason I had to be reminded about the statute of limitations was that the debt went back such a long way. In most cases, everything has happened within the last decade or so, and the only question is whether the plaintiff should have known of the claim at some time within the last six years of that decade. You don’t get cases where the cause of action goes back more than 200 years. But the same principle has to apply. The only thing different in Samantha van Eyck’s case was that it certainly wasn’t Samantha’s fault, or Kiah Harmon’s, that the deadline had been missed. It had passed many years before either of them had been born.
From my point of view, as simple as it was going to be to win this case, and as little credit as I deserved for my part in doing so, it was an unexpected boost in terms of career – not just for me, but for Harry and Ellen as well. News of our routing of the opposition, of our saving America from the spectre of having to fork out billions of dollars to repay a 200-year-old debt, would go directly to Assistant Attorney General Maggie Watts, from Maggie Watts to the Attorney General, and from the Attorney General to the President. The name of Dave Petrosian might even be whispered in the Oval Office. It would, no doubt, be forgotten in the same amount of time it took to whisper it, but the prospect was beguiling, nonetheless. It would be something to talk about over drinks and dinner for the rest of my life. For all that, I was going to miss the case.
As I said before, this was easily the most interesting case I had even been involved with. There was a certain romance in the idea of digging into the history of America at a time when its independence – its very nationhood – hung in the balance, when they could have been snuffed out like a candle if events had unfolded differently. It was interesting, challenging, and passionate. And even for someone like me, who slogged through law school part-time and took a very mundane view of legal practice, there was a feeling that this is why you go to law school, this is why you pay so much money, and why you subject yourself to so many tests to become a lawyer: not only because you can earn money at the end of it, but because maybe there will one day be a chance to be involved in something that becomes a part of history. And this case could have been it. I would never have said any of that to Harry, or even to Ellen, though I think Ellen would understand and I wouldn’t be surprised if she feels the same way. I wouldn’t say it because it’s just too personal.
When I called her, Kiah told me she was going to New Orleans to meet members of the van Eyck family, so we had arranged to meet on the Monday, the day after she returned. We met at Benny’s, a new casual diner not too far from my office, which was getting to be popular with local office workers. I set out in good time to make sure of a table where we could talk undisturbed. As one of his first customers I still had a little influence with Benny in such matters, though the more popular the place became, the faster that was going to disappear. On this Monday, my clout was still sufficient. As I walked, I was clutching the pleadings in a brown envelope under my arm. I suppose I hoped we might mourn the case together.