Judgment

4

That afternoon, Juliana returned to the courtroom to hear oral arguments in the case of Rachel Meyers v. Wheelz, in which a young woman was suing a hot, new ride-hailing start-up in Boston for sex discrimination. The case had been going on for months, and it showed no signs of slowing its march to trial. Juliana sometimes thought of it as Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, the unending court case from Dickens’s novel Bleak House.

“All rise,” the court officer called out. She entered, and everyone stood. Long ago she’d figured out that they weren’t standing for her. They were standing out of respect for the system of justice, respect for what they were all undertaking. You had to show respect. That was why she didn’t let witnesses chew gum, wouldn’t let people read newspapers or talk on their phones in her courtroom. She sat, and everyone in the courtroom sat.

At the plaintiff’s table sat the lead attorney, Glenda Craft, a fit, slender woman in her late fifties who either wore false eyelashes or used a lot of mascara. She talked loud, walked quickly, and thought faster on her feet than any other lawyer Juliana had ever met. There were rumors that she had never lost a case, and others about the legions of opposing lawyers who were heard throwing up in the courthouse bathrooms before going up against her each day at trial.

She was wearing a St. John suit. You could tell from the knit. It was forest green with brass buttons, and it draped beautifully without clinging. Her necklace was three strands of oversize pearls, feminine but strong, a perfect balance. The outfit said I’ve arrived.

The attorney for Wheelz, Harlan Madden from the law firm of Batten Schechter, was his own kind of killer. He was a deceptively affable man of around sixty with a large potbelly, a Yalie who’d gone to Andover, whose father and grandfather had likewise gone to Yale and Andover, who’d been the captain of the tennis team in college and was said to have been ferociously competitive, back in the day. He was wearing a perfectly tailored charcoal suit.

When Juliana finished law school, trial law was still a boys’ club, an occupation dominated by alpha males who were big and tall and had loud voices. She had no interest in imitating them. So she joined the US Attorney’s office, where she learned to be twice the trial lawyer any of the guys in private practice were. In cross examinations, instead of intimidating witnesses like male trial attorneys did, she’d win over witnesses and then suddenly turn on them, catch them off-guard in a contradiction. Her male colleagues used to call her “the pit bull” because she never let go. Witnesses on the stand would wilt under her politely relentless questioning.

Both Craft and Madden had their assistants, associates who did the grunt work, and there was a lot of grunt work. Reams of documents to go through, hundreds of linear feet. In the courtroom behind the bar sat the plaintiff, Rachel Meyers, a fragile-looking blond woman in her mid-thirties. She wore a blue blazer over a white button-down shirt. Seated nearby was a sprinkling of lawyers there for the defense.

Or maybe there to intimidate. Wheelz was a competitor to Uber and Lyft, nowhere near as big as either one, but growing fast. They had a self-driving-car unit that they believed was the future of the ride-hailing business, the near future. They had a lot of cash and could afford an expensive Big Law defense. They’d offered Rachel Meyers a generous settlement a few months back, but Rachel wanted to be heard. She wanted a trial. She didn’t want to settle.

Juliana looked over her courtroom. Everything the way it was supposed to be. The court officers in their uniform, the white shirt and black tie, the American flag patch on one shoulder. The court reporter with her gray stenomask, the oxygen-mask-looking thing with foam rubber around the mouthpiece.

She took a breath and began. “Good afternoon, Counsel. We’re here on the defendant’s motion for a protective order. I’ve read the papers. I understand there’s a dispute over whether certain documents should be produced or are entitled to a protective order. Mr. Madden, it’s your motion; why don’t you start?”

Harlan Madden stood. The lawyers always stood when addressing her. “Your Honor,” he said, “as you know, this is a gender-discrimination case. The plaintiff alleges she was terminated due to sex discrimination. Whereas the evidence shows she was clearly terminated due to ongoing performance issues. It’s as simple as that. But now they’re asking for the records of hundreds, if not thousands, of private electronic company chats, which the plaintiff knows is how employees at Wheelz conduct company business, much of it proprietary and confidential—”

Juliana cut him off. “Why can’t you simply redact them, remove the proprietary information?”

“I was getting to that, Your Honor,” Madden said, and he smiled. “The plaintiff is quite aware that these chats contain proprietary company information intertwined throughout. It’s impossible to separate the personal from the official. Now, under Mass. Rule of Civil Procedure 26, you have the authority to issue a protective order and rule that this discovery may not be had, that the plaintiff is not entitled to this information.”

Juliana had heard enough. She put up her hand and turned to Glenda Craft. “Counselor, why do you need this? What do these chats have to do with your claim of gender discrimination?”

Craft rose to her feet. “The company chat platform, Slack, wasn’t just used for work, Your Honor,” she said in her smoke-raspy voice. “The chats between my client and Devin Allerdyce, the CEO of the company, were full of inappropriate communications.”

Juliana had seen Allerdyce only once, on the first day of the pretrial motions, and had taken an immediate dislike to him, though of course she’d never reveal it. Allerdyce was rich and entitled, a sudden mega-millionaire at an age when most people are just starting their careers. He didn’t exactly dress up for court. He wore jeans and the obligatory hoodie, like so many Silicon Valley brats seemed to wear. Silicon Valley was replicating itself around the country, including in Boston.

Rachel Meyers, a hotshot young lawyer who’d made partner at WilmerHale six years out of Harvard Law, had been hired by Wheelz with a generous compensation package. If she’d stayed at least two years, and past the IPO, she would have made as much as $25 million. But that wasn’t to be. What she encountered at Wheelz, she claimed, was a frat house, hard-partying and mostly male. She was often the only woman in a room of twenty men. She was subjected to demeaning comments and unwanted sexual advances. She was hit on by the CEO, whose advances she rebuffed. Before a year was up, she was fired. She got nothing.

On the face of it, it seemed clear to Juliana that the young woman had gotten a raw deal. That she’d been fired for objecting to an atmosphere of pervasive sexual harassment.

But cases were rarely simple, and the law was the law, and Juliana Brody was beginning to garner recognition as a fair and dispassionate jurist. This case, like every case, had to proceed step by step, motion by motion, argument by argument. Decision by decision. That’s what she was here for. To play referee.

Harlan Madden had remained standing, ready for a back-and-forth, and swiveled as if he were back on the tennis court, preparing to return serve. “These chats were used primarily for business, Your Honor, and they include discussions of the most sensitive nature.”

“And sometimes they were used socially,” Craft said, “for non-business purposes — and I have proof of that, Judge.” She grabbed a folder from the table and removed a few sheets of paper from it. “May I approach?”

“You may.”

She handed Juliana a piece of paper, then gave one to Madden.

A moment later, as Juliana began scanning the page, Madden erupted, “This is — outrageous!”

It appeared to be a printout of a computer chat exchange. “This is a screenshot of the December 6 chat between my client and Mr. Allerdyce,” Craft said.

Juliana looked over the page. It seemed to start in the middle of a chat.

Allerdyce, the CEO, was hitting on his new general counsel, albeit in a clumsy and oily way.

Juliana looked up. “Why am I seeing this for the first time?” she said.

“Exactly,” said Madden, indignant. “Why was this not produced earlier? Also, Your Honor, we have no idea where this came from. There’s no date on it. No way, even, to substantiate its provenance. This should simply be stricken from the record.”

“Ms. Craft? Where did this come from? And why didn’t you produce this months ago, if you had it?”

“My client just gave it to me,” Craft said. She spoke quickly, defensive-sounding. “She just got it. It was mailed to her anonymously over the weekend. So it wasn’t in her possession until Saturday.”

“Mailed anonymously?” said Madden. “Your Honor, she’s gotta be kidding.”

“Obviously someone within the company — perhaps someone repelled by a culture that appears to be hostile toward women—”

Juliana reacted even before Madden could. “Ms. Craft, table the editorializing.”

“Printed it out and sent it to her, knowing she was suing the company.”

Juliana turned to the defense. “Mr. Madden, you need to explain to me what there is about this clearly inappropriate exchange that qualifies as confidential and proprietary information.” She gave him a cold, level look. Her “objection overruled” stare.

For just a moment, Madden was silent. He was a very smart guy, but this turn of events forced him to take a beat and compose himself. “The remainder of that conversation, I’m sure, dealt with company business of a highly confidential—”

“As you can see, this can easily be redacted, Counselor,” Juliana said. She almost added, “Right?” Even after three years on the bench, she had to edit herself, modulate her natural conversational style. In court, she was the judge, and it was vital to be more firm, more... judicious. “All right,” she said. She heard the door to the courtroom open, and she glanced up to see someone entering. “I want to see all chats between the plaintiff and Mr. Allerdyce, as well as any that mention the plaintiff—”

She glanced toward the back of the courtroom and saw a man with dark blond hair walk down the center aisle. She felt her face get hot. The man’s walk was familiar.

She couldn’t help but stare.

One of the spectators coughed. Someone snapped a binder closed.

It couldn’t be.

It wasn’t possible. They had agreed solemnly that they would never see each other again.

My name is...

The guy looked exactly like Matías. What kind of coincidence could that be?

She looked again.

Was she imagining this?

They’d agreed. A one-night thing.

It can’t happen again.

My name is Matías Sanchez.

The man crossed the bar and went over to the defense table. He nodded at Madden and took a seat, gracefully, in the only empty chair.

Her mind went blank. Someone was talking to her, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying. She turned to Madden and said, “Could you repeat that, please?”

“Your Honor,” said Madden, “I’d like to introduce an addition to our defense team.” He turned and gestured toward the man, who stood now and nodded courteously in her direction.

“Good afternoon, Your Honor,” he said in his pleasing baritone, that tiny trace of an Argentinian accent. “My name is Matías Sanchez.”