Upstairs the meeting was under way. Peter Morgan sat at the head of a teak conference table bearing breakfast pastries, coffeepots, and pitchers of orange juice. On his right was Harold Fineman, head of the litigation department; on his left, Anthony Streeter, in charge of corporate business. Across from them, looking somewhat uncomfortable, sat Wallace Finn, the partner who ran the pro bono program. Wallace was pale by nature, with close-cropped gray hair and sky-blue eyes; in a cloud-colored suit windowpaned with soft blue checks he seemed barely visible. He had participated in steering committee meetings years ago, when Streeter was just his protégé and Wallace himself had ruled over the complex web of deals that constituted the firm’s corporate practice. Wallace had been a legend in his day, able to maintain an intimate familiarity with the details of each of the most important transactions, appearing like a gray ghost to place his seal of approval as they closed or, more often, to restructure with a few bold strokes what it had taken others weeks to conceive.
The godlike omniscience came at a cost; he had worked so hard that his wife left him, and then he had worked harder in response. That had earned him a heart attack at fifty-three, and though the firm would never part with such a luminary, it became clear on his return that his run was over. The firm continued to use his name to promote its corporate work, but he hadn’t done any in eight years. Instead they parked him in the pro bono department, where he organized the firm’s representation of people who couldn’t otherwise get a lawyer. He was still ghostly in appearance, and much more seldom seen. Pro bono didn’t usually qualify
for steering meetings, and he was here today only because a problem had come up.
Peter Morgan didn’t like pro bono, and he didn’t like problems. He passed a cold gaze around the room and turned his eyes back down to the papers in front of him. “What do you have for us, Wallace?”
“The Harper case,” Wallace said. Receiving no reaction, he continued. “As part of the summer program, we agreed to represent a prisoner on Virginia’s death row.” Peter gave a nod of grudging acknowledgment. Every summer a fresh crop of law students, just out of their second year, descended upon the firms, part of the mutual feeling-out process intended to lead them to their permanent homes. These summer associates were a necessary evil, to Peter’s mind. The summer program was the only way to assure a continual supply of new blood for the firm, but on the other hand there wasn’t much to do with the summer associates, and no way to turn a profit. Paid a prorated first-year’s salary, the law students were usually entirely lacking in basic legal skills, and often in basic knowledge as well. You couldn’t give them any significant work to do because there was no way to know what glaring errors they would make, and you couldn’t charge clients for more than a small fraction of the hours they billed because no client would stomach their inefficiency. They could reasonably have been put to work as document clerks, though even then the small number of hours they billed would have made them a losing proposition, but no summer associate would return for a permanent position to a firm that had treated him that way. Most of them ended up with interesting research projects that either had no relevance to any real case or would be entirely redone by someone who knew what he was doing. Typically, they did little enough work on even these fictitious assignments and spent most of their time dining out on the firm’s credit cards and going on various outings arranged for their benefit.
Pro bono was the perfect solution: cases on which summer associates could take positions of significant responsibility without any worry that their incompetence would cause problems for the firm. Furthermore, it gave them an unrealistic idea both of the sort of work they’d be doing and of the firm’s commitment to pro bono practice, something law students seemed to value. And finally, it boosted the number of hours Morgan Siler could report that its attorneys had spent on pro bono work, which again helped in the recruiting process. Death penalty cases were ideal for
these purposes, something the kids could get really excited about. Each summer had one, like a class project or a hamster brought in to delight kindergartners. Like kindergarten projects, the cases typically amounted to little, and like hamsters, the prisoners usually ended up dead.
“What did he do?” Peter asked. “Oh, never mind. What’s the problem?”
“Well,” Wallace said, “we thought that once his case had gone all the way through the Virginia state courts, we could try to get relief from the federal courts. You know, file a habeas petition, make some constitutional arguments.”
“Of course,” said Peter. Law students loved constitutional arguments.
“He was sentenced to death in December, and we thought the appeals process would go pretty quickly. There’s automatic review of every death sentence by the Virginia Supreme Court, but it’s usually minimal. The family paid for a lawyer, but the guy wasn’t all that aggressive. So that was over by February. Then there was the state post-conviction review process, which again is perfunctory. The same lawyer filed a petition in April arguing that the imposition of the death penalty was disproportionate to the crime. That argument never works, so we figured the case would be ready for us to take it into the federal system by May. But the lawyer got sick and the Virginia Capital Defenders Office took over. They got some more time to prepare their motions and they made a real run at it—ten different issues, affidavits, expert testimony, the works. The Virginia Supreme Court refused to hear any of it, but the preparation took so long that the decision didn’t come down until mid-July. Then the Capital Defenders, who’d gotten pretty invested in the case, wanted to handle the federal petition too, so we had to convince them that we were going to do a good job on it, and by the time we got substituted in as counsel it was August.”
“And then?”
Wallace remained silent. “And then,” he said finally, “there were only four weeks left in the summer program and I didn’t think that the kids could do a reasonable job in four weeks. There’s a lot of material to go over from the trial, and none of them had actually written a real brief before.”
“Your loyalty to the client,” Peter said carefully, “is … commendable. So we erred in taking the case. Why don’t you give it back?”
“I don’t think the Capital Defenders Office has the staff for it now. I mean, they’ve got lots of these things, and just a handful of people working, and I think they’re fully committed.”
“I see,” said Peter. “But we can still withdraw as counsel, can’t we?”
“We’d have to get court approval,” Wallace said. “Which I’m sure we could do with the Virginia courts; they don’t care. But it would be unusual.” Peter regarded him impassively. “It would look bad,” Wallace continued. “I think the Capital Defenders people would make a stink. There could be some bad press.”
“That’s a point, Peter,” Harold joined in. “That’s not going to make us look good.”
Peter Morgan put one hand over his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, give it to some first-year.” A flick of the wrist dismissed the matter. “I don’t want to hear any more about this.” His eyes fell back to the papers. “Main order of business,” he said. “Hubble. I’ve got some reports here, and it sounds like this is going to be a substantial undertaking for us. Harold, tell me more.”
Harold cleared his throat. “The good news,” he said, “is that this is a fucking mess.” A slight frown creased Peter Morgan’s tanned brow. Harold was loud, profane, and an astonishingly effective litigator. In Peter’s private calculus, this made him an asset. The tumult of red hair, the cheap suits, the air of perpetual surprise all combined to work an insidious magic in court. Peter applauded the results. He had watched as Harold developed this identity; more, he had assisted. Still, Peter wished that Harold could drop the role for other occasions. “They need us,” Harold continued, “and they need us bad. The bad news is that this is a fucking mess. Our boys were storing some unpleasant chemicals—ammonium nitrate, methyl bromide, paraquat, endosulfan, carbofuran—and none too carefully.”
“What are those?” Peter asked.
“Ammonium nitrate is our friend from Oklahoma City. Fertilizer, but you can blow it up. Also emits very toxic fumes when cooked. The others are pesticides, herbicides. Chemicals to kill things. The cloud that came out was mostly ammonium, but the other stuff got in there too. Methyl bromide’s a neurological agent, and from the reports we have it looks like there were neurotoxins at work. A very bad air day, in short. Not anything you’d want to get too close to.”
“What’s the situation?”
“Well, they called us as soon as it happened, which was smart. Then they dicked around for a while with their in-house counsel, trying to settle it, which was a mistake. If we’d gotten there fast enough, we might have been able to go right to the victims and buy them off on the cheap, before they knew what was going on. But now the vultures have gathered. There are some pretty serious plaintiffs’ lawyers in town, and we can’t even talk to their clients. They’re looking to get it certified as a class action, take care of the liability issues in one trial, and start counting the money.”
“They’re not talking settlement?” Peter asked.
“They’re feeling pretty cocky right now. With good reason. You should see the place. I mean, it looks like Dresden. Like Bhopal. I don’t think we could offer them anything less than all of Hubble’s assets.”
“That seems more like surrender than settlement. How could we do any worse in a trial?”
Harold blew out his breath in a sigh. “Well, here’s the thing. Hubble Chemical is a decent-sized corporation. It’s worth a couple hundred million as a going concern. The liquidation value is substantially less, but still, break it up and sell it and you’ve got over a hundred million. Problem is, give this case to a jury, and if they get all excited about sending a message, they could award punitive damages well above that. So the jury doesn’t just kill Hubble; it kills them a lot. Ordinarily, that makes no difference, very dead being the same as dead. But Hubble is a subsidiary of Parkwell International, and Parkwell is a very big corporation. If there’s a jury award that’s far beyond what Hubble itself can pay, then it starts to look like Parkwell sent its subsidiary out there without enough money to cover the damages it was likely to cause. That’s going to make the judge more willing to hold Parkwell itself liable. And then we’re talking serious deep pockets.”
“Are they going after Parkwell?”
“We won’t know until we see the complaint. But I expect so. It’s a lottery ticket, but it doesn’t cost them anything. The problem it gives us is that the only way they can get to Parkwell is by making Hubble look underfunded, and the only way they can do that is by getting a monster judgment against Hubble. So they’re not inclined to settle.”
Peter looked almost pleased. “Well,” he said. “That certainly makes things interesting. What do you think, Anthony?”
Anthony Streeter was deep in thought, hands steepled before his face as if in prayer. A glistening skullcap of dark hair covered his head; a black bespoke suit embraced his body. An expensive monochrome tie lay like a silken chameleon in the folds of a similar-colored shirt. He raised his eyes to Harold and spoke without expression. “How much time do we have before anyone gets an enforceable judgment?”
Harold was taken aback. “Up to three years, probably. The trial will take some time, and there are always appeals. It’s a steady paycheck for us, but it’s not going to do Hubble a damn bit of good unless we come up with a pretty clever move.”
Something glittered in the depths of Streeter’s dark eyes. “You just hold them off awhile, Harold.” He turned to Peter. “We’ve been making arrangements. We can do it. This is a perfect opportunity.”
Peter Morgan smiled. “All right, then. That wraps it up for today. Let’s go make some money.” He looked at Wallace. “Or do whatever we do.” The lawyers rose and left the room.