Law and Peace

by Tim Kevan

  OldRuin looked really sad now and bowed his head a little. ‘Regret at not being with her when she passed away. Despite my protestations, she’d insisted I go off to court that morning. Maybe she knew and wanted to protect me. I don’t know. But when I arrived home in the late afternoon I found her. At peace.’

  Then he looked back up at me. ‘So who am I to say anything?’

  He raised his eyes upwards and looked slightly wistful. ‘The other day I discovered a note she had written to me many years ago. I’d never seen it before. She was always doing that. Writing love letters and then hiding them in silly places so that I’d find them, sometimes years later. Her “little love bombs into the future” she called them. She used to say they reminded her of the children’s torn up letter in Mary Poppins which magically survived even the fire. Well, I found one of these sitting on top of a book from which we used to read to each other when we were courting. Charles Kingsley actually. But what has lingered with me in the last few days, even beyond the beautiful words of her letter, was the dust that had gathered on top of the book. Plain household dust. Which made me so terribly sad. The weight of time. Paths we never trod.’

  I saw him suddenly light up, whilst at the same time his eyes became moist, as if he had been through some kind of catharsis. ‘But, BabyB, that’s just it. It’s the sadness and regret that carve out the depth of your soul.’

  He paused again. ‘My old college’s motto was Garde ta foy, BabyB, which is apparently old French for “Keep your faith”, though I have to admit that as students the alternative translation of “Watch your liver” always seemed more appropriate. Keep your faith, BabyB, and cherish those regrets. They’re who you are and who you want to be.’

  Monday 25 February 2008

  Year 2 (week 22): Moldy moves

  We have reached an agreement, of sorts, in the Moldy litigation, which could lead to some fireworks in the next couple of months. It happened at a case management conference today, which was unusually low key given that UpTights and OldSmoothie were facing each other down. As OldSmoothie and myself arrived he suddenly stopped talking. UpTights was there with TopFirst and they both watched us approach. Then like some sort of old-fashioned dance, OldSmoothie approached UpTights and asked if she might like to have a chat with him at the other end of the corridor. She nodded without anything more and followed behind as he led the way.

  TopFirst and I ignored each other as we watched them discuss matters in what looked like a peculiarly friendly way. Then they returned and OldSmoothie said with a big smile, ‘All agreed.’

  TopFirst and I stood there looking incredulous. One minute they’re at each other’s throats and the next they’re the best of friends. Anyway, that was an end to even the possibility of any fights today and we all marched into the small courtroom and let OldSmoothie tell the Master what had been agreed. Basically, there will be a handful of cases that will proceed relatively quickly and with only three experts on either side. Whilst they won’t strictly be formal test cases, they could end up being pretty determinative of the end outcome. OldSmoothie was obviously delighted with this as it means he will have to do very little work and then if all the others settle he’ll probably somehow finagle a fee for each one.

  However, I think the main reason the telecom company were up for this was that they are super-confident of winning and want to reassure their shareholders with a quick victory. Though I imagine another reason they were happy to agree to such expedition is that they think they control two of the cases going forward. So now all the opposing experts (neurological, psychiatric and telecom) will be chatting with their opposite number in the next week and after that it’ll be set down for trial.

  Needless to say that no sooner had the plan for trial been agreed than BigMouth the MP popped up on the evening news discussing the ‘crusade for justice’ that he was leading against the big bad telecom company on behalf of his constituents. This, despite the fact we haven’t even heard from him in over two months.

  Tuesday 26 February 2008

  Year 2 (week 22): In your dreams

  ‘I hate this job,’ said OldSmoothie at chambers tea today. ‘Seems a far cry from my childhood dreams of becoming rich and then going into politics and becoming even richer.’

  ‘Such an idealistic youth you must have been,’ said BusyBody. ‘Though I have to admit that running personal injury claims is hardly the civil liberty campaigner I saw myself as either.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said TheBusker. ‘It’s not that bad. Though granted, I’d take being a novelist or maybe a professional surfer given the choice.’

  ‘I just wanted to be captain of the England football team,’ I admitted with a smile. ‘Though unfortunately that was, if you can believe it, even more competitive than trying to be a barrister.’

  ‘All I wanted to be when I was a child was a vet,’ said UpTights.

  Everyone looked at her with incredulity and her face stretched into a smile as she responded, ‘Though as you can imagine, fainting at the sight of blood and the fact that I hate all animals except cats proved to be insurmountable obstacles.’

  Then OldRuin came forward and said quietly, ‘I know it might sound a little boring, but all I wanted to be was a barrister. Not a loud high-flying one or anything like that. Just a comfortably off one with a practice that could keep my family and bring me a few good friends along the way.’

  That was enough to silence any more of our whingeing.

  Wednesday 27 February 2008

  Year 2 (week 22): On guard

  Well tomorrow I’m against TopFirst in the case that was adjourned last month, and I reckon this probably has something to do with the fact that when I opened my post this morning I found ‘final bills’ for my gas, electricity, telephone and council tax. Someone has clearly rung up all these firms and told them I’m moving out. You’d think that they’d have needed my own personal say so and a bit of serious ID to do this, but after spending the whole morning on the telephone untangling it all, the companies confirmed that all they need is for notice to be given over the phone. Incredible. And this was all made even more difficult by the fact that I had to keep explaining why it was my name on the bills when my mother owned the house. Let’s just say it was not a good morning.

  Anyway, why would I possibly think that this was down to TopFirst? Could it have anything to do with the fact that come late afternoon, when I finally got the chance to open my papers for tomorrow’s case, I discovered that this time it’s him who has made a last-minute application for an adjournment. He’s quoting all sorts of law and he blatantly wanted to keep me out of the library to check through it all for as long as possible today.

  So now I have a long night ahead of me.

  Thursday 28 February 2008

  Year 2 (week 22): Get out of jail free card

  After finally getting to bed around 2 a.m., I was then woken up at about 4 a.m. by a minicab that had parked outside my house with its music blaring at full volume. Then the driver rang my doorbell and shouted, ‘Minicab for Mr BabyBarista.’ Eventually I had to get up and explain that I hadn’t ordered a minicab and that I could only imagine it was some sort of prank. Of course, this didn’t go down at all well with the driver and finally, in order to keep the noise down, I paid him some cash to go away.

  So by the time I got to court, TopFirst’s little tactic of trying to unsettle me had, I’m afraid to say, succeeded. When we met, I said, ‘Pretty low down and petty, TopFirst. Haven’t you anything a little more stylish to throw at me?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, BabyB. Let’s just stick to the case, shall we.’

  The substance of which was that out of the blue, TopFirst had produced an expert’s report that his client, who crashed straight into the back of our client’s car, was suffering from what lawyers call ‘automatism’. Or to put it another way, a Get Out of Jail Free card. Simply, the client has a huge no-claims bonus riding on the outcome and the insurance company suggests tha
t maybe he suffered a ‘blackout’? ‘You know, come to think of it, maybe I did.’ Then off they trot, get an expert to say, ‘Guess what? I think your old client over there suffered a blackout,’ and hey presto, my badly injured client gets nothing. Tough luck and all but blackouts just don’t count. No one’s fault. Just one of those things. Even if it wasn’t a real blackout. Just how it works.

  Well, I wasn’t having any of it, particularly as I’d heard that this specific insurer had been taking this ‘tactic’ on quite a few cases recently. Not that I don’t accept that they’d been arguing the blackout excuse all along. It’s just that now they were suddenly producing a brand spanking new expert who wasn’t umming and aahing as most experts do, but was instead categorically saying it was automatism and that he was the best expert in the world, ever. So TopFirst now wanted an adjournment in order to call his new expert and he gave all sorts of spurious arguments as to why.

  But then, despite all of this, I have to admit that my client is still AWOL. Not that I plan to tell TopFirst this. So after much to-ing and fro-ing in the negotiations I eventually relented on the basis that he pay all of my costs and agreed to another adjournment.

  I just hope my client eventually turns up.

  Chapter 6

  March: WhistleBlower

  Monday 3 March 2008

  Year 2 (week 23): WhistleBlower

  Received a curious letter today relating to TheMoldy litigation. Hand-delivered to chambers. It came from someone working within the telecom company we’re suing and stated among other things that, ‘If you want to know exactly what the company knows about the detrimental health effects of their own higher-powered mobile signals, particularly on the elderly, then I suggest we meet.’

  The proposed meeting place was the top of Chancery Lane and the date was tonight. To be absolutely frank (HeadofChambers would approve of my choice of words), without some sort of whistleblower evidence our case is pretty high risk at the moment so it’ll be interesting to see what he or she has to offer. I mentioned it to Slippery who sounded excited I think, as much by the conspiratorial manner of the approach as by the potential content. So according to the instructions I’ll be looking out for a man carrying a red umbrella at the top of Chancery Lane this evening.

  Tuesday 4 March 2008

  Year 2 (week 23): Cloak and dagger

  Well, despite the fact that I was beginning to feel a little sceptical the more I thought about it, WhistleBlower did actually turn up last night. Although when I arrived at Chancery Lane at 7 p.m. as agreed, I saw no one. Then, just to add to the whole sense of intrigue, someone pulled down the window of a black cab and shouted to me to get in. There was no red umbrella and she was certainly not a man, but I figured she must be who I was supposed to meet because who else would possibly be looking for me there at that particular time? Once in, I got my first chance to see who exactly this WhistleBlower was. She was probably in her late forties and looked particularly stressed, which I guess added a whiff of authenticity to the proceedings.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you my name,’ she said, after I’d shaken her hand and introduced myself, feeling peculiarly English and formal.

  ‘I do understand,’ I replied. ‘But why have you contacted me?’

  ‘I simply won’t be able to live with myself unless I hand this information to someone involved in the case.’ She sighed. ‘You see, my mother has Alzheimer’s and if this mobile phone technology is in any way causing even a small amount of the same type of suffering to anyone else and their family, then I think people should know.’

  ‘Well, quite,’ I replied. ‘That’s the whole point of our case. But what information is it that you have exactly?’

  ‘I have this,’ with which she produced what I was slightly disappointed to note was a white, rather than a brown, envelope. Brown envelopes being de rigueur for these kinds of situation, or so I thought.

  I took it and then pressed a little further. ‘Will the contents make sense to someone who doesn’t work for the company?’

  ‘They should do,’ she replied. ‘But here. If you really don’t get it, you can contact me on this email address.’ She handed me a piece of paper with an anonymous email address printed on it.

  She then stopped the cab and I was put back on to the street, more than a little thrown by the whole weird nature of the meeting. After that, I had to go to an Inner Temple dinner followed by a case this morning and so I haven’t yet had a chance to read the papers she gave me. Slippery has been hounding me on the phone all day and we’ve agreed to meet this evening to go through the contents over a drink.

  Wednesday 5 March 2008

  Year 2 (week 23): Bombshell

  After meeting up with Slippery and getting to grips with WhistleBlower’s material, and then staying up half the night sifting through it in more detail, I really do think we might be getting somewhere. She’s basically given us a bunch of accounts that show payments to a number of companies around the world. In themselves they wouldn’t have meant a great deal were it not for a memo that accompanied them which suggested that these monies were ultimately reaching certain supposedly independent experts who have completed various supposedly independent reports on the safety of their particular mobile masts. Worse than that, there is another memo that explains how one of these experts had originally submitted a report suggesting that the technology was dangerous, only to ‘change his mind’ on the issue after the payments were made.

  As you can imagine if I was able to prove any of this then it would be a bombshell. Not only would it show that the telecom company were potentially bribing the experts but it would also show that they were aware of the possible dangers of the technology and failing to warn people about it.

  With the trial imminent and OldSmoothie approaching matters in his usual languid way, I’ve now got to track down further evidence to back up Whistleblower’s claims and so I have enlisted the help of TheBoss (I know that Claire would disapprove, but needs must is what I’m telling myself). I’ve also got to consider how I would then use this evidence in the case itself.

  Thursday 6 March 2008

  Year 2 (week 23): Spending a penny

  With the new evidence from WhistleBlower and the cases starting to get themselves into order, today was the day we needed to get everyone together for a case conference with two of the main Moldy clients we think are clean: the delightful Arthur and Ethel. In other words clients who we at least hope don’t have any connections with the other side. That meant that OldSmoothie, myself and TheVamp – representing the Bar – and SlipperySlope, NurserySlope, ClichéClanger and four other people – representing the other half of the profession – were all in the same room with our clients. That made ten lawyers billing out an average of perhaps £400 an hour which brought the total bill to some £4,000 an hour. Oh, and when you add VAT and then a 100 per cent uplift if we win the case, the costs were not far short of ten grand an hour. Or as Slippery pointed out this morning as we waited for the clients, ‘That’s more than one hundred and fifty pounds a minute. Time to make hay, BabyB! Chat about the weather: one grand. Football, another. Controversial celebrity topics should bring double. Oh, and don’t forget to pause and enjoy the most expensive coffee and biscuits on the planet.’

  Bearing all that in mind, I felt pretty guilty at the end of the conference when the effects of last night’s curry meant I needed to slip out to the loo. I deliberately departed discreetly since I knew I might be, as they say, some time. And when I eventually emerged, around half an hour later, to find the whole conference waiting for me, I was mortified.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind that we waited whilst you spent a penny,’ said Ethel. ‘I just wanted to thank you personally for all your hard work’.

  Which led to much guffawing after they left.

  ‘Spending a penny,’ chuckled SlipperySlope.

  ‘More like half a million pennies,’ said OldSmoothie.

  Friday 7 March 2008

  Year 2 (w
eek 23): Paper trail

  Had a meeting with TheBoss today. He’s been researching the issues raised by the documents that WhistleBlower handed over.

  ‘With the help of a few backhanders, I’ve already managed to complete the paper trail back to a couple of the experts. Should be enough to cross-examine on at least,’ he said.

  ‘And what about the original experts’ report, the one that said that the effects of the masts are damaging?’

  ‘No sign of it yet.’

  This was pretty crucial and we both paused. Then he said, ‘The person who would really be able to help is WhistleBlower herself. I haven’t managed to track her down yet but I’m going to give it a try via the email she gave you.’

  Monday 10 March 2008

  Year 2 (week 24): OldWorrier

  Boy oh boy, if you thought Worrier sounded exhausting, she’s got nothing on my opponent today who I’ll call OldWorrier. He was about sixty and said he’d been practising for about fifteen years. I found this out when he first called me up last week ‘to discuss the case’. Well, given that it was a standard car case worth all of around £2,000 I certainly didn’t expect to see the papers until late afternoon the day before and that would be if I was lucky. I told him this and he seemed much put out and then went on to lecture me about the merits of his own case for about an hour, constantly asking me what I thought. Well, what I thought was that he sounded more like a litigant in person than a barrister and so I looked him up and discovered that he was in fact a ‘head of chambers’. This seemed even more peculiar until I then found out that he was the only member of this chambers and that they appeared to be run from his bedsit in Brockley.