Prologue

It was the hot summer of 2016.  The soaring heat bounced off of the shiny steel and glass sides of the Manhattan buildings, while the creeping humidity seeped through the clothing of the sprawling humanity below.

Inside the ZNN News building, the production gallery was on its usual frantic mission to conclude the thirty-minute TV news bulletin exactly on schedule. Director Ryan Van Eyk sat looking at the bank of TV screens in front of him, with Debbie, his production assistant, sitting to his right. His dry mouth was directly over the microphone. There was no time for a drink of water. They were running a video piece on the latest failing Middle East negotiations and had just thirty seconds before they would cut back to Rachel Vine, the anchor newscaster in the studio.

“Liza, give us a sound test.” His croaking voice came through to Liza Starkey’s earpiece as she stood in the shade of the tall, concrete entrance porch to the De Freer University Hospital in Lower Manhattan, her cameraman just a few feet in front of her.

“How’s this coming through Ryan, can you hear me?”

“Comms and visuals are good to go,” Debbie announced.

“Okay, honey, you’re fine – stand by everyone – cutting to studio in three – two – one.”

The red light on the robotic camera in the news studio came on. The teleprompter began to roll, and the image of Rachel Vine filled the TV screen.

“And finally, we have at least some good news to report for a change. The Hessman Pharma Corporation, one of the world’s top ten pharmaceutical companies, has donated an amazing twenty million dollars to the De Freer University Hospital, New York, to enable it to open a specialist department catering for motor neuron patients. The department is opening today and our health correspondent Liza Starkey is at the hospital now. Liza, this seems an incredible amount of money.”

“It sure does, Rachel. Gerald Hessman, the CEO of Hessman Pharma, has just concluded his speech in front of about 100 clinicians and news reporters. In it, he pointed to the bad press the pharmaceutical companies have often received – the high cost of drugs and the profit margins companies like his make. But he emphasized that most of the money goes back into research and development, and as an example of that, Hessman Pharma is currently developing a new drug to postpone the symptoms of motor neuron disease. It’s also investing in this new department to help sufferers of this debilitating and fatal illness – hold on, he’s coming this way.”

Liza moved out of the line of waiting press reporters and walked alongside the sprightly 87-year-old chief executive.

“Mr. Hessman, why is your company donating such a large sum to this cause?”

“It’s a great cause to support,” he replied as he continued walking to the limousine waiting at the roadside. “It’s part of the social responsibility of companies like mine to support great projects like this that will give great benefit to the community.”

“And what’s going to be your next project, Mr. Hessman?” Liza asked hurriedly, as she received a fifteen-second warning in her earpiece from the studio to end the interview.

“We’re turning our attention to Southern Africa. There’s a great deal of poverty and disease out there. These people need help.”

“And what sort of help do you think you can give them?”

“We’ll announce that when we’re ready. You know me, Liza – can never stop giving.”

With that, he got into the limo, and Liza turned around to the camera.

“This is Liza Starkey at the De Freer University, New York, for ZNN News. Now back to the studio.”

“Thanks, Liza,” Rachel responded. “Harvey Spicer has our latest update on the weather. Harvey, we’ve had this heat wave for the past three weeks, is it going to continue?”

It had certainly been one of the hottest summers in New York. The AC in Courtroom 26B of the federal court building was struggling to maintain any semblance of a reasonable temperature. The Honorable Jefferson M. Krantz, from his elevated judicial bench, looked around his airless courtroom, as the case of Vincent v. Grande Vitesse Tire Corporation meandered its way slowly into the sixth week of trial.

He looked down to his left towards the plaintiff’s table. In first chair sat Ben Chapman, a seasoned trial attorney and named partner in the law firm of Kegel Chapman Stertz, assisted today in second chair by his senior associate, Louise Aldridge. She attracted Judge Krantz’s attention, not merely because she was conducting the direct examination of one of the plaintiff’s experts, who was giving his testimony from the witness stand to the left of the judge’s bench, but also because Louise was the only female lawyer in court.

In contrast, at the defense table to the judge’s right sat a cadre of male lawyers from yet another of Manhattan’s expensive law firms, Elliot Major Woodfall. Although lead defense counsel Theo Gates was watching Louise direct her witness through his testimony, the other five lawyers at the table, presumably associates, scribbled away on their yellow legal pads, heads down, as if they were in a contest to see who could take the fastest note of the witness’s evidence.

Judge Krantz looked at the pale, gaunt face of the plaintiff’s lead counsel.  The judge had known Ben for about twenty-five years.  Any trial in courtroom 26B with Ben Chapman in the plaintiff’s first chair had always tended to be a trial by combat, as he would bludgeon his way through the cross-examination of defense witnesses, seeking to destroy their credibility.  And yet, with finesse, he could argue the most complex points of law with forensic precision and persuasion.

Ben’s physical appearance that hot summer afternoon gave the judge cause for concern.  It wasn’t that Ben wore the same shabby, gray suit he’d always worn when appearing before a jury.  That had always been his style – a deliberate contrast with the expensively tailored, dark suits of the attorneys sitting around the defense table. They represented the major insurance companies and large commercial conglomerates against whom Ben fought in the regular David and Goliath struggles of product liability and personal injury litigation.

The judge had noticed over the past couple of days Ben’s gradual, physical and mental deterioration.  He looked motionless, distracted, remote from what was happening around him in that courtroom.  His hair, normally well groomed, was disheveled. His necktie hung loosely around his neck. He sat there staring straight ahead of him.  It was as if his mind was elsewhere.

As he listened to the long, flowing cadences between Louise’s questions and the lengthy, technical responses of her expert witness, Ben’s mind began to wander. He seemed more concerned about the lack of effective air conditioning in that courtroom. The room felt so hot. He was perspiring. He seemed exhausted. His thoughts wandered across the Hudson River to Mendham, New Jersey, where he and Ronnie, his wife, had lived for several years – the cool shade of the beech and oak trees and the manicured green lawns that surrounded each of the houses.

Ronnie’s professional name was Veronica Franco. She’d often told Ben she didn’t care much for the name, Veronica, ever since she’d discovered her namesake was an eighteenth-century courtesan (in reality, a high-class whore) in Venice, Italy.  He smiled at the thought. She was always to be known as Ronnie to those close to her. She reserved her full name for her professional work as a partner at another law firm. It appealed to her sense of humor when she was introduced to professional opponents by the name of a Venetian courtesan. They never really knew what to make of her. It threw them off their mark. The law firm she worked for was presently representing the occupants of the defense table in courtroom 26B – Elliot Major Woodfall.

Ben’s mind wandered over the last few years of his life. He’d never really taken a break from the punishing hours, the ongoing stress of meeting budgets, the endless demands of his clients and the complexity of dealing with heavy commercial litigation cases with their never-ending, high-volume documentation. He was only 45. He felt at this moment as if he were 85. It was as if his brain just wanted to switch off – to hibernate into a long, deep silence of rest.

He tried to bring his mind back to the matter in hand and focus hard on the key elements of this case taking place in the courtroom.

Vincent v. Grande Vitesse Tire was a test case. There were over 300 other potential plaintiffs waiting in the wings for a decision from this jury. Ben had signed up a fair number of these, but firms in other states had signed up the majority. These law firms had entered into an agreement with Ben’s firm, as a syndicate, to help bankroll the immense legal costs of taking on a product liability case against a global corporation. The syndicate had chosen Franklin Vincent’s case largely because this area of law was Ben’s specialty – he had, after all, written one of the leading legal texts: Chapman on International Product Liability – but also because the facts of the Vincent case were relatively straightforward and of high value.

Grande Vitesse Tire specialized in the manufacture of tires for high-performance sedans and sports cars. The tires were made in France but were sold in the U.S. through a subsidiary company based in Maryland. Franklin Vincent was CEO of a technology company in Albany, New York, and had purchased a set of the latest version of Grand Vitesse’s tires for his Jaguar XF sports car. While driving on Interstate 84, the tire on the front passenger’s side of the car had disintegrated, forcing the car to plow into an embankment – wrecking the car and also wrecking Vincent’s life – his extensive lower body injuries resulted in him becoming a paraplegic.

The case against Grande Vitesse Tire was that this was not a mere blowout. The tires were unsuitable for high-performance cars, and this was, or should have been, known to Grande Vitesse from its test runs at its experimental tire testing facility at Chantilly, near Paris. If such prior knowledge could be proven, then the jury would be entitled to make a multi-million-dollar award in punitive damages in addition to Vincent’s considerable compensatory damages.

The testimony of the expert witness, presently giving evidence from the stand, was crucial to the plaintiff’s case.  Ben, as lead counsel and as a senior named partner in his law firm, should have been conducting that direct examination.  Instead, he had left this to his associate. It was almost a dereliction of duty to his client, who sat behind him in a wheelchair, anxiously awaiting the outcome of his four-year ordeal.

Ben’s exhausted mind was no longer capable of thinking through the complex morass of technical tire testing data.  Instead, his thoughts wandered away to his early days as an associate, twenty years ago.  Often times, associates had spent their days in windowless rooms, plowing through the thousands of pages of documents produced by the opponent’s attorneys as a result of discovery requests.  Their job had been to go through the endless number of bankers’ boxes, reading the mass of documents contained in them, from top to bottom, in the quest to find documents that might just be relevant to the case.  It had been a mind-numbing, tedious task – a baptism to litigation that all associates had had to endure.

He mused how things had changed.  Instead of bankers’ boxes of paper documents, Grand Vitesse Tire had produced a single computer file, a “load” file containing millions of electronic documents, mainly emails and their myriad of attachments.  He’d had to bring in technology experts to use the latest software to process and analyze the data, reducing it to a few thousand documents.  He’d had to train his associates to use computer review technology to examine and to tag documents that could be adverse to the opponent’s case or relevant to key witnesses.  He and Louise had then to read through those documents.  It had been a process that had drained him.  Yet, his mental exhaustion was not something that would disappear after a night’s sleep – these days he rarely slept.  It was a tiredness that was gradually paralyzing his mind and his body.

Judge Krantz had sensed that something was desperately wrong.  Ideally, Krantz wanted to speak to Ben privately in the judge’s chambers to find out what was ailing him.  But judicial protocol prevented this, without defense counsel Theo Gates also being present. That would have defeated the exercise.  Ben would have just clammed up. The judge anxiously thought of another strategy.  It was a hot Friday afternoon at the end of this sixth week of trial.  He would adjourn early, as close to 3:30 p.m. as he could make it.  That would give Ben the respite of the weekend to try to recover.  Louise, in second chair, was an impressive advocate, but she was no match for the thirty years trial experience of her opponent Theo Gates.  Ben needed to be on his feet, fighting.  Justice demanded an equality of arms here, and the judge was determined to bring this about.

Louise courageously continued the direct examination of her expert witness.  

“The defendant in its Answer has pled the tire blow-out and its subsequent disintegration was probably caused by the tire hitting an object on the road surface.  They point to the fact that the other three tires were fully intact.  What do you have to say about that?”

“I strongly disagree,” came the confident reply.

“And why do you say that?”

“An email was found among the millions of documents produced by the defendant on discovery.  It was from one of the defendant’s technicians at its testing facility in Paris, France.  It was written to his supervisor, expressing concern that a total disintegration had been experienced when testing an identical tire at 55 m.p.h.  I understand the employee has subsequently been fired.”

“Objection, your honor!” exclaimed Theo Gates, shattering the stillness and calm of the courtroom.  “That evidence is hearsay, both as to the email itself and that last comment made by the witness. I ask that it be stricken from the record …”

“Nonsense!” shouted a voice from the plaintiff’s table.

That word came from Ben Chapman. It was the only word he’d spoken in the last three days of the trial.  It stopped Gates dead in his tracks.  A menacing silence filled the entire courtroom as Ben slowly rose to his feet.  His arms and hands seemed to be propping up the full weight of his body.

“Nonsense!” he shouted again. “The Federal Rules of Evidence . . .”

He paused.  He looked slowly around the courtroom.  His eyes saw the blurred, startled faces of the jury to his right.  The judge seemed to be a considerable distance away as Ben’s peripheral vision closed in like a long, dark tunnel.  An intense pain filled the back of his eyes.

His arms crumbled beneath him.  The last thing he remembered was the look of shock on Louise’s face as he crashed to the floor unconscious.