Judgment

30

The jury in her morning trial was out, luckily, so she was able to work quietly with Kaitlyn in her lobby. She’d barely gotten a few hours of sleep and was grateful for the slow pace of the day. She skipped lunch, had no appetite.

Every time her phone rang her first thought was that it was the Boston Police. But the call never came.

The afternoon was busy, with a number of oral arguments and motions. But she was glad to be busy. It distracted her. She kept seeing the man’s body, his grotesquely contorted face. The man had been murdered.

What did that mean about her? Might she be a target too?

She entered the courtroom, and everyone stood. She sat down in the high-backed leather chair and looked around. She felt a low-grade dread. She was finding it hard to concentrate. She said, “Are we all here?”

Harlan Madden kept looking back at the door.

Juliana said, “Should we wait for your co-counsel?” She felt dry-mouthed and tense and wary.

“Well, frankly, Your Honor, he hasn’t been answering messages, so let’s just continue without him.”

Juliana felt her stomach drop. She had to be careful about what she said. She needed to think clearly. Coffee would help, but she had to avoid drinking too much: caffeine would make her even more anxious.

That afternoon the two sides in the Wheelz case were presenting oral arguments. A few weeks earlier, the defense had asked Rachel, in the form of an interrogatory, to describe all “sexual and romantic relationships” she’d had in the last five years. Glenda Craft wouldn’t let her reply. That was an outrage, she said. So Harlan Madden had served a motion to compel her to answer. Then both sides filed briefs. Today they would go at it full bore in the courtroom, arguing over whether the defense had the right to grill Rachel on her sex life before she started working for Wheelz.

When she first became a judge, Juliana was astonished at how different it was from being a trial attorney. It was like going from mono to stereo, from black-and-white to Technicolor. All of a sudden she had to listen with both sides of her brain, understand dueling arguments at the same time. You had to see three-hundred-sixty degrees. You had to keep an eye on which juror was sleeping. You also had to make decisions with alarming speed, sometimes. You saw a lot of suffering and felt the stress of wanting to get every decision right. You had to be extremely empathic. You had to understand the humanity, the greed, or the sorrow of the defendant and the anguish of the victim’s family.

Make one bad decision, and the whole thing gets flipped on appeal.

“Good afternoon, counsel,” she said. “I’ve read the papers. Mr. Madden, it’s your motion; I’ll hear you.”

Madden stood at the counsel table. “Judge, as you know, this is a sex-discrimination suit. We’ve propounded interrogatories to the plaintiff, but she has declined to answer questions regarding her romantic history, which are clearly relevant.” He looked at Glenda Craft. “Part of the plaintiff’s burden here, Your Honor, is to show that the work environment at Wheelz was hostile or offensive, to show it was unwelcome. We think if Ms. Meyers is required to answer these questions, the evidence will show whether the atmosphere at Wheelz was in fact unwelcome, which is the plaintiff’s burden of proof at trial. We believe that Ms. Meyers’s prior sexual history will show that the conduct she encountered at Wheelz was something she was accustomed to. We think this information is directly relevant.”

Juliana stifled a yawn, exhausted yet tense. “Thank you, Mr. Madden. Ms. Craft, what do you have to say to this?”

Glenda Craft stood. “Your Honor, the defense’s goal here is nothing less than to embarrass and humiliate the plaintiff. They’re just trying to defame her. They’re trying to imply that Ms. Meyers had a bad moral character — which has no bearing on the conduct within the company. Her sexual history has no relevance to what happened at Wheelz during her tenure there. This is just character assassination, plain and simple.”

Glenda Craft paused, and Juliana broke in, “Thank you, Ms. Craft. It was helpful to hear from both of you.” There was no point in letting them both go on at length. She already knew what they were going to say, they’d said it in writing, and she’d made up her mind anyway. She was tired and finding it hard to concentrate.

“As I said, I’ve read the papers, and I’m familiar with this area of the law. So I’m going to rule from the bench.” Both lawyers looked at her sharply, surprised. “I’m going to allow the motion in part and deny it in part. I’m going to deny the motion with respect to any sexual or romantic relationship not connected to the workplace. Anything that happened while she was employed at Wheelz, any sexual relationship with a fellow employee, is relevant and discoverable. It’s fair game.” Madden half rose to object, and Juliana — tired and stressed and needing to get the hell out of there — shut it down: “Thank you, all.”