Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  Prescott, Heath, and Abby were waiting for them as they entered the same conference room Shane used his first day back just a month before. Despite all three of them ready and waiting, an avalanche of paper spread out before them, the place still looked vast and empty, only a fraction of its massive space in use. The room was silent as they arrived, each person poring over papers.

  “Good afternoon everyone,” Shane said, walking to the head of the table and dropping his briefcase into his chair. He wouldn’t be sitting much over the next few hours and didn’t have a single thing in his bag that hadn’t already been committed to memory many times over. With one hand he grasped the chair back and pushed it off to the side, pulling a rolling whiteboard over in its stead.

  Behind him Tyler leaned his crutches against the side of the table and took up the last chair on the right, falling in beside Abby. She turned and offered him a small smile as he did so, nodding her head.

  “First of all, I know we’ve met via video conference, but allow me to introduce you to Tyler Bentley, here and in the flesh,” Shane said. On cue, all three transitioned from casting curious glances his way to outright staring. “Tyler, this is Professor Alfred Prescott, Heath Wilson, and Abby Hill, the people that have been working the last month on your behalf.”

  A bit of color rushed to Tyler’s cheeks at the comment. Using the table for leverage, he pushed himself to a standing position and extended his hand across the table, shaking each of their hands in turn.

  “It is very nice to meet you all. Again, and this goes for you too Shane, I can’t begin to thank you enough for this.”

  Shane nodded his acknowledgement as the other three did the same, everyone retreating back to their seats. He waited a few moments to let them get settled and silence to fall over the room. He then clasped his hands in front of him and turned to the white board, taking up a blue pen and scrawling across it, starting in the top left corner.

  “Alright,” Shane said, “so here’s how I envision this going. I apologize for the late start time, but this was the earliest we could get a flight in here for Tyler. This may not surprise some of you, but I was shocked to discover there isn’t a direct 747 flight from Worland to Columbus.”

  All the faces around the table broke into smiles.

  At the end of it, Tyler raised his hands by his side and said, “Who knew?”

  That elicited chuckles from everyone as Shane jammed the cap on the bottom of the pen. “So even though it’s a little later than we would all like, trial begins in three days, and time is of the essence. I wanted to get everybody in the same room and outline what we’re planning to do in the next few weeks. This is the time to flesh things out, so if you see holes or have questions, don’t be bashful.”

  He paused and looked at each of the faces before him, hoping to drive home the point. There was no ego involved at this point, no concerns about appearance. If something seemed wrong or needed to be addressed, it should be, and fast.

  “Alright, first and foremost,” Shane said, whirling to the white board and writing the Roman numeral one. “Courtroom positioning. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and sitting at the table will just be me and Tyler, for two reasons. First of all, Professor I know you can’t always be there, and Heath, Abby, I wouldn’t dream of trying to pick one over the other. That being said, I think it would be better to reserve the entire first row on our side of the courtroom and have you three lined up right there as much as possible.”

  Heath and Abby both nodded in agreement. Prescott extended a finger towards him and said, “You are the only one of us licensed to speak anyway, so that makes perfect sense.”

  “Which kind of leads me to the second part,” Shane said, nodding. “My supervising attorney, for purposes of my pro hac vice forms anyway, will not be joining us.”

  Shane shifted his attention to the back of the room, his hands pressed together before him, making no attempt to elaborate further on the comment.

  “Tyler, I don’t know how comfortable you’re going to be with this so please speak up now, but I’m thinking you leave the crutches at home for the duration of this. I know we talked about waiting until after trial to get your prosthetic, but seeing you getting off the plane today it occurred to me that the jury needs to see you either in a chair or hopping.”

  Tyler stared back at him, his lips drawn into a tight line, saying nothing.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and believe me, the idea here isn’t to paint you as some sort of charity case. What we need to relay to the jury is how profound an impact this has had on your life. We need them to understand that SynTronic took you from a world-class running back to someone that requires great effort for basic mobility.”

  Three gazes turned to regard Tyler, who considered the notion in silence for several long moments. After he was done, he blinked himself alert and shifted his focus back to Shane.

  “Makes sense. Besides, I already told you I hate those things anyway.”

  “Good,” Shane said, nodding in appreciation, thankful that Tyler wasn’t trying to challenge him on it. If he had, Shane would have backed down, but it would have made for a tougher sell in front of the jury.

  “Second,” Shane said, moving down the board, writing in all capital letters beside the Roman numeral two, “Monday will begin with jury selection. Professor, voir dire is something you’ve spent a great deal of time studying, would you care to outline what we’re trying to do?”

  “Certainly,” Prescott said, his thick English accent rolling out over the room. “Every lawyer in the world states that the purpose of voir dire is to find a fair and impartial jury pool, but that is pure bollocks. What we’re trying to do is find the fifteen most sympathetic individuals we can.

  “In this instance we are at a distinct advantage because of the unique situation our client finds himself in. A young, handsome, local celebrity that had his livelihood and his physical well-being removed from him by a faulty device. There is very little a jury can’t find favorable in that scenario.

  “Still, it will be our goal to find women, mothers if we can. We will want to find anybody that might have been an athlete themselves, and any major sports supporter. Race doesn’t much matter here, nor does gender beyond what I just mentioned. The only groups we may want to avoid will be the geriatric and the occasional blue collar worker, not because they wouldn’t be on our side, but because they have a history of limiting the amount of damages awarded.”

  Shane stood with his arms folded in front of him as Prescott spoke, Heath and Abby both taking notes. When the explanation was complete, Shane turned back to the board and wrote down a third Roman numeral.

  “Now, bear in mind I expect them to make a motion for change of venue at some point, but that might not be until after jury selection is complete and they see the hand they’ve been dealt. If that happens, I’ll be shocked if the judge allows it, but we’ll have to be prepared to argue it if he allows them to file.”

  “Who is the presiding judge?” Prescott asked.

  “The Honorable Richard Lynch, appointed in ’98 by Clinton. Liberal, but not over-the-top.”

  Prescott nodded his approval. “I agree. I have met Richard on a handful of occasions, seems a forthright man and if I’m not mistaken, a bit of a football fan.”

  A smile tugged at Shane’s mouth. It was harder to find men in Columbus that weren’t football fans than those that were. That alone was the chief reason he was suspecting a change of venue motion to be filed any moment, SynTronic reasoning that they could never receive a fair trial in football-crazed Ohio, not with a fallen demigod as the plaintiff.

  It was a fact that Shane had been using as a basis for almost every move his case strategy had employed thus far.

  He turned back to the board and wrote out numbers four and five, blue ink now scrawled over half the available white space. “Once we have a jury in place, we’ll move into opening statements. After that, we’ll begin calling witnesses.”

&nb
sp; Block letters A through F went up on the board, Shane narrating without turning around. “For obvious reasons, we’ll open with Tyler. Tomorrow morning he and I are going to sit down and go through every question I intend to ask twice, followed by everything I think SynTronic will try to draw out of him on cross. Professor, thank you for looking over those lists and making additions, appreciate it.”

  Prescott nodded without replying.

  “After Tyler will be his mother Margie, the basic reasoning being to corroborate Tyler’s story and humanize it even more.”

  Shane continued writing names as he went down the list. “After that I’ll be calling Dr. Manningham, the surgeon that performed the surgery, and William Curl, the trainer that was overseeing his rehab. We’ll finish up with Dr. Ben Lomax and Martina Graham, both as subject matter experts. Dr. Lomax to discuss the faulty design of the KnightRunner, Martina to discuss Tyler’s prospects as a future pro football player.”

  Heath and Abby both continued to write as Prescott looked on. In the back of the room, Tyler made a pained grimace at the mention of Graham and the testimony she would be providing, though he remained silent.

  “I received SynTronic’s list of witnesses two days ago, and was surprised to see it is a little thin. The best I can figure is they either plan to attack our witnesses under cross and try to minimize their testimony to the point of being moot, or they still have plans for forcing a settlement.”

  “How long do they have to try for a settlement?” Tyler asked, his voice snapping Abby’s head to the side.

  “They can offer a settlement clear up until the day of closing argument,” Shane said, still writing on the board. “But if we get anywhere near that far, they’ll just wait it out to see what happens with the jury.”

  Tyler nodded his understanding as Shane finished writing, turning back to face the room.

  “They are going to call Dr. Leonard Pinkering, the supervising physician on Tyler’s case, along with Marcellus Sarconi, the SynTronic rep that has been spearheading the entire KnightRunner project. He is serving as their material and product expert on this one, Pinkering as their medical guy.

  “Last, they will be calling a Mel Hinderly, an NFL draft analyst from New Jersey.”

  A loud snort sounded out from the back of the room.

  “Tyler and Mr. Hinderly have a bit of history together,” Shane said, a half smile on his face.

  “The guy’s a hack,” Tyler said. “Hates OTU, hates me, hates our entire conference. Thinks if it’s not played in Texas or the Deep South it doesn’t count as football.”

  “So he’s there to refute any testimony about your draft position?” Heath asked, his first words of the entire meeting.

  Another snort slid out from Tyler. “Odds are he’ll try to convince the world I shouldn’t have even started on my high school team and had no chance at being drafted.”

  The smile on Shane’s face grew a touch wider. “Excellent, I look forward to seeing him try to make that one stick here in Columbus.”

  Heath and Prescott both nodded while Tyler scowled towards the table. Abby remained motionless, no reaction to the discussion of football around her.

  “After that, we have closing arguments,” Shane said, not bothering to turn and write anything down. “So that’s the long and short of it, the next few weeks of our lives in six bullet points. Any high-arching questions before we get to work?”

  All four heads were turned towards him, nobody saying a word. Shane shifted his eyes up to the clock on the far wall, the time just after five o’clock. They all had a long night ahead of them, the first of what was sure to be many in the coming weeks. He dropped the marker back into the white board tray and unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves, rolling them up almost to his elbows.

  “Alright, let’s get started. Heath, tell me anything new you’ve uncovered on product liability cases.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The request was very simple, a directive cloaked as a suggestion, the way most things were when they came to Ute. Nobody ever had the fortitude to come right out and tell him to do anything, but most everybody he dealt with needed something from him. What that might be varied a great deal, a nod both to his arrayed skill set and the aura of mystery that surrounded him.

  Nobody knew what they could or couldn’t ask of him because nobody knew what he could or couldn’t do.

  This request was very simple, so simple in fact that Ute had not yet decided whether or not he should be offended by it. Three days before, Reed had reached out to him. As there were only two people alive that knew his direct number, and he was certain his mother hadn’t given it away, it meant that Reed had climbed the corporate ladder wishing to speak to him. The fact that he had put in such effort, and pushed aside the fear that he possessed, spoke volumes to the necessity of the call.

  That was the only reason Ute had not taken offense to the request, he had already seen what was at stake. While the job at hand might seem trivial, the kind of thing any chapped ass monkey with two hands and a flashlight could perform, he knew where the case could and most likely would end up. He’d known it for some time, having started on the job even long before being asked to do so.

  “Um, Mr. Carbone, this is Connor Reed,” Reed stated into the phone, his voice bearing a hint of strain in it. “I am calling to ask that you look into something for us, should it become necessary later on.”

  Ute preferred meeting in person. It gave his imposition of will a much greater gravitas. As his legend had grown though, people had become too fearful of dealing with him in person and his act had been forced to grow.

  “What?” Ute asked, a single word that he spit into the phone receiver, not a question of clarification but a demand to know what Reed wanted.

  “I would like to revisit the question you asked last week at our strategy session,” Reed said, pretending not to notice the venom in Ute’s voice. “If you are available, we think it might be prudent for you to begin keeping tabs on Laszlo and his team.”

  “Why?” The malevolence was the same as the first question, the tone even sharper.

  There was a long pause followed by a deep sigh, Reed contemplating his response, trying to avoid saying the words.

  Ute was not about to let him do so.

  “Through the discovery process, we have become increasingly aware that our position, however well thought out and intended, is just not coming together as we’d hoped.”

  Sitting alone his car, Ute shook his head in disgust. Leave it to a lawyer to say fifty words to sidestep a question that could have been answered in two.

  “You’re fucked, and you need me to unfuck it.”

  “No no no,” Reed responded a bit too fast, defensiveness in his voice. “I didn’t say that, and I asked you to do no such thing. Right now we are just requesting that you start keeping tabs on them should a situation arise in the future. You will of course be paid your standard fee plus expenses for your services.”

  “You don’t pay me anything,” Ute shot back, the words clipped and harsh. “Don’t act like you’re doing me any favors, or I’ll start keeping closer tabs on you. That pretty little wifey of yours still like to play tennis on Thursdays? Or how about that fat bastard Ramirez and those two little brown sausages he takes to the park every weekend? Or maybe my favorite, that luscious little blonde you’ve been jerking off to for the last three years?”

  There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line, though no words of any kind were said. Ute let the silence hang in the air long enough to make his point, a thin smile spreading across his face.

  “I’ll look into Laszlo and his crew, see what I can turn up. You let me know if you get the stones to act on it, otherwise don’t ever call this number again.”

  Ute slammed the phone down before Reed could respond and hadn’t heard a word in the three days since.

  A light rain began to dot the windshield of his Toyota as he sat in the parking lot outside the Ohio Tech law
school, a sack of Wendy’s on the passenger seat beside him. This was his fourth different vantage spot of the afternoon, moving his car often to keep from arising suspicion. His neck ached from sitting behind the wheel for hours on end and the car stunk of fast food grease, but he kept a sharp lookout on the front door of the school, anxious for a sign of any of the five people he knew were within.

  On the floor board of the passenger seat was a file almost two inches thick he’d amassed in the previous two weeks. The four members of the legal team he had covered, ranging from Prescott’s family back in Britain to Laszlo’s visit to his mother the weekend before. This was the first sign of the man himself though, of Mr. Tyler Bentley, in Columbus since the operation.

  The plan at first wasn’t to spend the day following the team, the file on the floorboard sufficient to do everything he needed and then some. Ute took a great deal of pride in bringing new meaning to the phrase painfully thorough, a fact that any member of that team could fast learn if he was given the go ahead. While doing some light surveillance on Laszlo that morning he grew curious and decided to follow him.

  When he’d seen him walk out the front door of the airport pushing Bentley, there had been no doubt what he would be doing the rest of the day.

  Enough years spent in this line of work had made one thing very clear to Ute. If you want to stop a case dead in its tracks at any point, take out the one named in the suit. If there is no plaintiff, there can be no trial.

  That was the thought that kept running through his head as he leaned low behind the steering wheel and watching Laszlo and Bentley both exit the building, Laszlo holding the door as Bentley walked through on crutches. The rain on the windshield and the steam from within masked his windows as they went by and climbed into a faded Honda two rows over, neither one even glancing in his direction.