I can’t give you a full account of how I spent the next few days. In many ways it was an endless meandering cycle of misery and depression. We weren’t saying much around the office. There was a lot going on. Sam was there every morning working with Arlene, and ironically, plaintiffs were signing up and offering help on a daily basis, even though we had told everyone by email that the government’s motion to dismiss was coming up, and weren’t sure we would even have a case left to pursue in another week. Jeff Carlsen and Ed van Eyck had both called and offered any help they could give as attorneys, though neither had come up with an answer to the statute of limitations. Kate Banahan had been as good as her word, and a nice young man called Eric from her Wills and Trusts class was desperately trying to make himself useful, while driving Arlene crazy by giving the impression that he had never seen the inside of an office before. Worst of all, Reg was beavering away on my tax records in a corner of my office, so the audit was never far from my mind. A lot was going on, but most of it was going on in a subdued silence. In the afternoons, Sam went to the library, or so she said. I wasn’t sure whether she really was going to the library, or whether she just couldn’t stand being in the office any more. I wasn’t sure how long I could stand it myself.
By the time I had unburdened myself to Sam and Arlene, and we had recovered a little from the blow, Tuesday was all but gone. On Wednesday morning, I decided to make a positive start. I opened a new file in the van Eyck folder on my laptop and boldly typed in the words, ‘Plaintiff’s Reply to Government’s Motion to Dismiss based on Statute of Limitations’. For two hours or so I typed non-stop. I began with a statement of the facts, which was pretty much the same as Dave Petrosian’s statement of the facts, except that I treated them as facts in contrast to Dave’s insinuation that they belonged more appropriately in the fiction section. In the second section I traced the history of the Claims Court and its statute of limitations, at the end of which I triumphantly demolished Dave’s assertion that we had missed the deadline by 200 years, and demonstrated conclusively that it was close to 130 years, tops. I began the third section with the words, ‘It follows, therefore…’ At which point I hit a brick wall and stopped in mid-sentence.
Reg had questions about my tax affairs that took up most of Wednesday afternoon. I pretended to be frustrated at the interruption, but in a strange way it was almost a relief to be made to remember what had been going on in my practice four or five years ago. Anything was better than sitting at my desk without the faintest idea of how the third section could progress beyond ‘therefore’. On Thursday, I rummaged through a number of files and went back through briefs I had written, or the government had produced, dealing with the statute of limitations in cases long gone. I don’t know what I was expecting to find: some chance observation, some statutory provision or court judgment I had overlooked – anything that might offer a glimmer of hope. I found nothing.
On Friday afternoon, just after lunch, I gave up. The third section still consisted of a single incomplete sentence, and there was no prospect of developing it further. The plaintiffs had no response to the government’s motion to dismiss. The hearing was on Monday morning. Dave was right. Our claim was barred by the statute of limitations. It was unfair, but the law was the law, and that was the way it was. I drafted an email of apology to all the plaintiffs who had signed up, the van Eyck family in general, and anyone else I thought I might conceivably have offended. I would send it when I returned from court on Monday. I tried to write the van Eyck case off in my mind. It had been fun, but it was time to move on to the next case. It didn’t work as far as my feelings about Sam were concerned. Sam was personal: I didn’t know how what I was going to say to her, but whatever it was, I wasn’t going to say it in an email.