The Litigators (28 page)

The third firm meeting ended abruptly when a woman the size of a linebacker, in sweats and flip-flops, barged through the front door and demanded to speak to a lawyer about Krayoxx. She had taken it for two years, could actually feel her heart getting weaker, and wanted to sue the company that very day. Oscar and David vanished. Wally welcomed her with a smile and said, “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place.”

———

T
he family of Senator Maxwell hired a Boise trial lawyer by the name of Frazier Gant, the number one man in a mildly successful firm that handled mostly tractor-trailer accidents and medical malpractice. Boise is not exactly on the big-verdict circuit. It rarely sees the liberal awards common in Florida, Texas, New York, and California. Idaho frowns on tort litigation, and juries there are generally conservative. But Gant could put together a case and get a verdict. He was someone to reckon with, and at the moment he happened to have the biggest tort case in the country. A dead senator, stricken on the Senate floor, and the cause of death pinned squarely on a huge corporation. It was a trial lawyer’s dream.

Gant insisted on meeting in Washington, as opposed to Boise, though Layton Koane was perfectly willing to meet anywhere. In fact, Koane preferred anywhere but Washington because that would bring Gant into his office. The Koane Group leased the top floor of a brand-new sleek, shiny ten-story building on K Street, that stretch of asphalt packed with the real power brokers in Washington. Koane had paid a fortune to a New York designer to project the image of pure wealth and prestige. It worked. Clients—current and prospective—were awed by marble and glass the moment they stepped off the private elevator. They were in the midst of power, and they were certainly paying for it.

With Gant, though, the tables were turned. It was the lobbyist who would be handing over the money, and he preferred a more low-key meeting place. But Gant insisted, and some nine weeks after the senator’s death, and, more important, at least to Koane and Varrick, almost seven weeks after the FDA yanked Krayoxx, they introduced themselves and settled around a small conference table at the far end of Koane’s personal office. Since he was not interested in impressing a client, and he found this particular task distasteful, Koane didn’t waste time.

“I have a source who tells me the family will settle for five million without a lawsuit,” he said.

Gant frowned, a quick sharp grimace as if a hemorrhoid had twitched. “We can negotiate,” he said, a throwaway line that meant
nothing. He’d flown in from Boise to negotiate and nothing more. “But I think five is on the low side.”

“What’s on the high side?” Koane asked.

“My client doesn’t have a lot of money,” Gant said sadly. “As you know, the senator devoted his life to public service and sacrificed a lot. His estate is only half a million, but the family has needs. Maxwell is a big name out in Idaho and the family would like to maintain a certain lifestyle.”

One of Koane’s specialties was the shakedown, and he found it somewhat amusing to be on the other end of one. The family consisted of a widow, a very nice, low-key woman of sixty whose tastes were not expensive, a forty-year-old daughter who was married to a Boise pediatrician and maxed out credit-wise on all fronts, a thirty-five-year-old daughter who taught school for $41,000 a year, and a thirty-one-year-old son who was the problem. Kirk Maxwell Jr. had been battling drugs and alcohol since he was fifteen, and he was not winning. Koane had his research, and he knew more about the family than Gant.

“Why don’t you suggest a figure?” he said. “I mentioned five, now it’s your turn.”

“Your client is losing about twenty million a day in revenue because Krayoxx is no longer on the market,” Gant said smartly, as if dealing in inside information he’d cleverly gathered.

“It’s more like eighteen, but let’s not nitpick.”

“Twenty has a nice ring to it.”

Koane glared over his reading glasses. His jaw dropped slightly. In this business nothing surprised him, and he was faking it now. “Twenty million bucks?” he repeated, as if dumbfounded.

Gant gritted his teeth and nodded.

Koane recovered quickly and said, “Let me get this straight. Senator Maxwell was here for thirty years, and during that time he received at least $3 million from Big Pharma and its related PACs, much of it from the pockets of Varrick and its executives, and he also took about $1 million from folks like the National Tort Reform Initiative and other groups seeking to severely restrict lawsuits, bogus and otherwise. He
took another $4 million from doctors, hospitals, banks, manufacturers, retailers, a very long list of good-government groups determined to cap damages, limit lawsuits, and basically slam the courthouse door on anyone with a claim of injury or death. When it came to tort reform and Big Pharma, the dear late senator had a perfect voting record. I doubt if you ever supported him.”

“Occasionally,” Gant said without conviction.

“Well, we couldn’t find any record of any contribution from you or your firm to any of his campaigns. Face it, you guys were on opposite sides of the street.”

“Okay, why is that relevant now?”

“It’s not.”

“Then why are we discussing it? He, like every other member of the Senate, raised a lot of money. It was all legal, and the money was always spent to get him reelected. Surely you understand this game, Mr. Koane.”

“Indeed I do. So he drops dead and now blames Krayoxx. Are you aware that he had stopped using the drug? His last prescription was in October of last year, seven months before he succumbed. His autopsy revealed significant heart disease, congestion, blockage, none of which was caused by Krayoxx. You take this case to trial and you’ll get buried.”

“I doubt that, Mr. Koane. You’ve never seen me in the courtroom.”

“I have not.” But Koane had the research. Gant’s largest verdict was $2 million, half of which was set aside on appeal. His previous year’s IRS 1040 listed an adjusted gross of just under $400,000. Chump change compared with the millions Koane raked in. Gant was paying $5,000 in alimony and $11,000 a month on a highly mortgaged golf course home that was underwater. The Maxwell case was, without a doubt, his ship coming in. Koane did not know the specific terms of his contingency fee, but according to a Boise source Gant would get 25 percent of a settlement and 40 percent of a jury verdict.

Gant leaned forward on his elbows and said, “You and I both know this case is not about liability, and it’s not really about damages. The
only real issue here is how much Varrick is willing to pay to keep me from filing a big, splashy lawsuit. Because if I do, then we keep the pressure on the FDA, don’t we, Mr. Koane?”

K
oane excused himself and went into another room. Reuben Massey was waiting in his office at Varrick Labs. Nicholas Walker was also at the table. They were using a speakerphone. “They want $20 million,” Koane said, then braced for the attack.

But Massey received the news without emotion. He believed in using his products and had just popped a Plazid, his company’s version of the daily happy pill. “Wow, Koane,” he said calmly. “You’re doing a helluva job at the negotiating table, old boy. Start at five, now you’re up to twenty. We’d better grab the twenty before you get it up to forty. What the hell’s happening down there?”

“Nothing but greed, Reuben. They know they have us over a barrel. This guy freely admits the lawsuit is not about liability or damages. We can’t take any more bad press, so how much are we willing to pay to make Maxwell’s case go away? It’s that simple.”

“I thought you had some great source whispering in your ear to the tune of $5 million.”

“I thought so too.”

“This is not litigation. This is armed robbery.”

“Yes, Reuben, I’m afraid so.”

“Layton, Nick here. Have you countered?”

“No. My authority was five. Until you say so, I cannot go higher.”

Walker was smiling as he spoke. “This is the perfect time to walk away. This guy Gant is already counting his money, several million, he thinks. I know the species, and they’re very predictable. Let’s send him back to Idaho with empty pockets. He won’t know what hit him, neither will the family. Koane, tell him your limit is five and the CEO is out of the country. We’ll have to meet and discuss all of this, which could take a few days. Warn him, though, that if he fires off a lawsuit, then all settlement talk goes away.”

“He won’t do that,” Koane said. “I think you’re right. I think he’s counting his money.”

“I like it,” Massey said, “but it would be nice to wrap this up. Go to seven, Layton, but that’s all.”

B
ack in his office, Koane settled into his chair and said, “My authority is seven. I can’t go higher today and I can’t get the CEO. I think he’s traveling in Asia, probably on a plane.”

“Seven is a long way from twenty,” Gant replied with a frown.

“You’re not getting twenty. I spoke with in-house counsel, who’s also on the board.”

“Then we’ll see you in court,” Gant said, zipping up a thin briefcase he hadn’t used.

“That’s a pretty lame threat, Mr. Gant. No jury in the country will give you $7 million for a death that was caused by heart disease completely unrelated to our drug. And the way we litigate, a trial is three years away. That’s a long time to sit and think about $7 million.”

Gant abruptly stood and said, “Thank you for your time, Mr. Koane. I’ll see myself out.”

“When you leave, Mr. Gant, our offer of $7 million comes off the table. You go home with zero.”

Gant stutter-stepped slightly, then regained his stride. “See you in court,” he said, tight-lipped, and left through the door.

T
wo hours later, Gant called on his cell. Seemed the Maxwell family had reconsidered, came to its senses, at the prodding of their trusted lawyer, of course, and, well, $7 million sounded pretty damn good after all. Layton Koane carefully walked him through each issue at stake, and Gant was happily on board with all of it.

After the call, Koane relayed the news to Reuben Massey.

“I doubt if he ever talked to the family,” Koane said. “I think he
assured them of $5 million, said what the hell and rolled the dice with twenty, and is a happy boy going home with a settlement of $7 million. He’ll be a hero.”

“And we’ve dodged a bullet, the first one to miss in a long time,” Massey said.

I
n federal court, David filed a lawsuit alleging all manner of fair labor violations by a shady drainage contractor called Cicero Pipe. The job was a large water-treatment plant on the South Side, of which the defendant had a $60 million piece. The plaintiffs were three undocumented workers from Burma and two from Mexico. The violations covered many more workers, but most refused to join the lawsuit. There was too much fear of coming forward.

According to David’s research, the Department of Labor (DOL) and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had reached an uneasy truce regarding the mistreatment of illegal immigrants. The steadfast principle of unhindered access to justice overrode (slightly) the country’s need to regulate immigration. Therefore, an undocumented worker courageous enough to fight a crooked employer would not be subjected to scrutiny by ICE, at least not while engaged in the labor dispute. David explained this repeatedly to the workers, and the Burmese, with Soe Khaing’s prodding, eventually found the nerve to file suit. Others, from Mexico and Guatemala, were too frightened by the idea of risking what little money they were being paid. One of the Burmese workers estimated there were at least thirty men, all of them thought to be undocumented, being paid $200 a week in cash for eighty hours or more of hard labor.

The potential damages were impressive. The minimum wage was $8.25, and federal law also required $12.38 for any hour over forty per
week. For eighty hours, each worker was due $825.20 per week, or $625.20 more than he was being paid. Though exact dates were hard to pin down, David’s best guess was that the current scam by Cicero Pipe had been under way for at least thirty weeks. The law allowed liquidated damages of twice the unpaid wages, so each of his five clients was entitled to about $37,500. The law also allowed the judge to impose court costs and attorneys’ fees on a defendant found liable.

Oscar reluctantly agreed to allow David to file the lawsuit. Wally could not be found. He was burning up the streets looking for large people.

Three days after the lawsuit was filed, an anonymous caller threatened to cut David’s throat if the lawsuit was not dismissed immediately. David reported the call to the police. Oscar advised him to purchase a handgun and keep it in his briefcase. David refused. The following day, an anonymous letter threatened his life and named his pals—Oscar Finley, Wally Figg, even Rochelle Gibson.

T
he thug walked briskly along Preston as if hurrying home at such a late hour. It was just after 2:00 a.m., the late July air still thick and warm. Male, white, age thirty, an impressive rap sheet, and not much between the ears. Slung over his shoulder was a cheap gym bag, and inside was a two-liter plastic jug of gasoline, tightly sealed. He took a quick right and darted low onto the narrow porch of the law office. All lights were off, inside and out. Preston was asleep; even the massage parlor had finally wound down.

If AC had been awake, he might have heard the slight rattle of the doorknob as the thug gently checked to see if someone had forgotten to lock up. The lock had not been forgotten. AC was asleep in the kitchen. Oscar, though, was awake on the sofa, in his pajamas, under a quilt, thinking about how happy he’d become since moving out.

The thug eased along the front porch, stepped down, and scooted low around the building until he came to the back door. His strategy was to get inside and detonate his crude little bomb. Two liters of gasoline
on a wooden floor with curtains and books nearby would gut the old house before a fire crew got there. He shook the door—it too was locked—then quickly jimmied it with a screwdriver. It swung open as he took one step inside. Everything was dark.