Killer Market

24

« ^ » “Long before the days of the first Pharaoh the Egyptians had carved couches, bedsteads of iron, and, it is believed, of bronze. Carpets were on the floors of the wealthy.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872

As a district court judge, I don’t get a lot of jury trials, nor do I often get to pass judgments on civil matters where damages are more than ten thousand dollars. But this Monday was different

Sylvia Cone Westermann versus Kurkland’s Quality Carpet Cleaners in a civil action for negligence.

Mrs. Westermann’s attorney had filed to have the matter heard in district court because it was quicker than waiting for a date in superior court, and neither attorney moved to postpone when they learned I’d be hearing the case rather than Judge Dunlap, who was still out of town.

Mrs. Westermann was claiming that Kurkland’s had improperly cleaned her Turkoman rug and had, in the process, irreparably damaged it so as to render it unsalable. Previous to Kurkland’s cleaning said rug, its market value was placed at sixty thousand dollars. Current value? Two thousand.

Plaintiff was asking sixty thousand in damages and ten thousand in punitive damages for her pain and suffering. (Kurkland’s had impugned her two Lhasa Apsos.)

Jury selection can take weeks in a capital case and even selecting a civil jury can eat up more than a day if either of the parties is well known in the community. But none of the prospective jurors called knew either party and only one had ever experienced dissatisfaction with a carpet cleaner. I allowed that one to be dismissed for cause. No peremptory challenges were issued.

The jury was seated in less than an hour, which has to be some kind of record.

Mrs. Westermann was one of those permanently indignant women, compact and pugnacious. Her steel gray hair was fashionably clipped, and the pearl buttons on her navy silk suit matched her pearl choker and pearl drop earrings. She immediately took the stand and told her story. She had called Kurkland’s Quality Carpet Cleaners and asked for an estimate to clean her authentic, hand-loomed, seven-by-ten Turkoman rug that lay under her dining-room table on top of a rose Berber wall-to-wall.

She had been put through to Mr. Kurkland himself and, after some negotiation, they agreed upon a price for his services. Upon arrival at her home, Mr. Kurkland had noticed her two Lhasa Apsos and asked if there were any possibility that they could have soiled the rug.

“I told him absolutely not!” Mrs. Westermann testified. “My dogs are quite well trained and they are never allowed in the dining room. He wishes to blame them for his own incompetence.”

According to her testimony, Mr. Kurkland proceeded to lay a plastic sheet between the rug and the Berber carpet. The description of his cleaning process sounded careful enough to me. He had first tested for colorfastness, then handwashed the rug on his hands and knees, rinsing and toweling as he went. According to Mrs. Westermann, though, “he left it so wet, it took two days to dry and when it did dry, it was faded and splotched.”

“Describe your rug before Mr. Kurkland cleaned it,” said her attorney.

“It was beautiful,” she mourned. “Vibrant and glowing with jewel-like colors.”

The rug had been entered as Exhibit A and her attorney now asked for permission to show it. I agreed and it was unrolled on the floor in front of my bench. I must say that while I know almost nothing about Oriental rugs, they do appeal to me and I’d been into several of the showrooms devoted to them here at Market, wondering if I could afford a decent reproduction of my own. This one had a dark red background woven in an all-over geometric design. Mrs. Westermann’s authentic article might have been vibrant and jewel-toned at one time. Now it seemed to have faded unevenly in places, so that four or five areas were almost gray, as if someone had sprinkled a light dusting of ashes over those places.

Mr. Kurkland’s attorney seemed curiously non-combative.

“Mrs. Westennann, did you comparison shop for a carpet-cleaner?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Was Mr. Kurkland’s the lowest price you got?”

“Well, yes. I saw no point in spending extra—”

“Thank you. Did Mr. Kurkland advise you that it was best to have the rug cleaned at his establishment where he had a proper drying table?”

“Well, yes, but I was planning a dinner party and I was afraid it might not be returned in time.”

“And you are convinced it was his ineptitude that caused these spots instead of your Lhasa Apsos?”

“Absolutely. They know they aren’t allowed in there. Mr. Kurkland got my rug too wet. That’s all there is to it.”

“I see. No further questions.”

Her attorney now called a carpet expert, a small tidy man who described how a fine Oriental should be cleaned: by hand, on a drying table, one tiny section at a time.

“If a rug has been frequently vacuumed and properly cared for, what soil there is should lie mostly on top of the pile. You only want to dampen the upper surface, using the mildest soap possible. Then you immediately sponge it with clear water and blot up all the excess dampness with clean white rags or white paper towels. No patterns or colors,” he warned the jury earnestly. “Only white.”

“So there should have been no need for that sheet of plastic between the rug and Mrs. Westermann’s wall-to-wall carpeting?”

“Technically, no. But if he was in the habit of using too much water, then it was certainly a necessity to prevent soaking the undercarpet. On the other hand, plastic would hold the excess water next to the rug and prevent the rug from drying more rapidly.”

In his expert opinion, Mrs. Westermann’s fine Turkoman had indeed been damaged by improper cleaning.

Since Mr. Kurkland’s attorney had not challenged the man’s credentials, I wondered what sort of defense he planned. On cross-examination, his only questions pertained to how one cleans away dog urine.

“Unfortunately, there is no way,” said the expert. “The ammonia and uric acids soak right into the wool and attach themselves so that they’re impossible to get out in any way that wouldn’t do more harm to the rag itself.”

He was asked if the faded splotches on the rug might not be due to dog urine. He hedged. When finally pinned down, he grudgingly agreed that they were not entirely inconsistent, but it remained his firm conviction that the rag had been damaged by too much water.

His was the longest testimony and when Mr. Kurkland’s attorney finished with him, Mrs. Westermann’s attorney announced that the plaintiff rested.

Mr. Kurkland’s attorney rose and made a pro forma request for dismissal, citing a lack of conclusive evidence to prove his client’s negligence.

I refused and broke for lunch at that point, after warning the jurors not to discuss the case among themselves.

Detective Underwood was waiting out in the hallway when I exited the courtroom. He said he was there to testify in a case being held in the next courtroom and thought that as long as he was so close, he’d put my mind at rest about Savannah’s black sports car.

“I ran a check on all vehicular incidents in a fifty-mile radius for that week. Not one single hit-and-run reported.”

I was deflated. I’d almost talked myself into a scenario of teenage carelessness and delusional mother-love and sacrifice.

Beyond a casual “poor dears” shrug when they were mentioned, Drew had seemed indifferent both to the Colliers’ cut in income and to the loss of business Kay Adams and Poppy Jackson would experience if Fitch and Patterson withdrew from their stores. I was almost convinced that such indifference signified a deeper callousness that would allow her to shrug off a hit-and-run, especially if Savannah had urged her to; and now Underwood was telling me that the hit-and-run never happened?

What did that do to my theory that Savannah had killed Chan in a misguided attempt to protect Drew from the heartache of his many affairs?

“Shoots it all to hell, don’t it?” the pragmatist said sourly.

“What about Heather McKenzie?” I asked.

“Well, yesterday being Sunday, she was a little harder. But not much. Turns out her father was a personal friend of someone at the parent company of Furniture/Today.”

“Was?”

“He was CEO of a large freight-forwarding company in Boston. Had a massive stroke and died last summer. Nice guy, according to our source. Devoted to his wife and daughter. She’s their only child. Still lives at home, but that may be because the mother’s not well. Has her own desktop publishing business there in Boston where she puts out newsletters for various organizations all over New England. Occasionally sells small feature articles to the Boston Globe, but not really considered a reporter.”

“So why is she researching Savannah?”

He shrugged. “Who knows?”

For lunch, I drove away from the center of town and found a relatively uncrowded neighborhood lunch counter. It was no J. Basul Noble’s, but I had a slice of meatloaf with a dab of mashed potatoes and string beans and still got back in time for court to reconvene at one o’clock.

Mr. Kurkland took the stand first and his testimony echoed Mrs. Westermann’s except that he was sure her Lhasa Apsos were not nearly so well trained as she insisted.

“And how can you speak with such certainty, Mr. Kurkland?”

“Number one, on account of I could smell it. Number two, on account of when I lifted up the rug to put my plastic tarp under it, I could see the stains where they wet through to the carpet.”

Mr. Kurkland was tubby and clearly perspiring. He also spoke with a distinct Bronx accent and I had a feeling he wasn’t winning many friends in the jury box. Especially during cross-examination when Mrs. Westermann’s attorney, sensing victory, made him admit that plastic tarps did imply the possibility of too much wetting of the rug. Nor did it help when he was forced to admit that those stains on the Berber carpet could have been caused by wine or juice spills that had soaked through.

It seemed to me that the acids in wine or juice would be pretty damaging, too, but no one asked my opinion.

Like the plaintiff, defense called but one witness, another expert on rug cleaning, and I sat back expecting to hear claims that Mr. Kurkland’s methods were entirely acceptable. It would probably come down to which expert the jury chose to believe.

He began with a mini-lecture on the nature of fine wool rugs, how the yarn is colored with natural vegetable dyes, and how damaging the acids in dog urine could be. Thus far, he sounded like the Westermann expert.

“Now, sir,” said Mr. Kurkland’s attorney. “There has been much talk back and forth about dog urine. Is there any way to say decisively whether or not the dogs did indeed use this sixty-thousand-dollar rug as a fire hydrant?”

“There is. While I did inherit the rug-cleaning business established by my father, my degree is actually in textile chemistry. Over the years I have discovered that certain stains manifest themselves in different colors when exposed to black light.”

Like me, the jury sat up in renewed interest.

“And how does dog urine manifest itself?”

“If it is present, it will show up as a green tint.”

“Your Honor, if it please the court, my witness has brought a black light with him today. If we could lower the lighting here in the courtroom, he could demonstrate his testimony.”

“Any objection?” I asked counsel for the plaintiff.

He was clearly taken by surprise, but he could read the eagerness on the jurors’ faces and knew what would happen if he prevented them from seeing the expert’s show-and-tell.

“No objection, Your Honor.”

I turned to the bailiff. “Mr. Dow, will you please find a plug for his extension cord and then cut the lights?”

“Yes, ma’am!” he said and turned off all the lights in the courtroom. There were windows in the rear doors and enough light came from the hallway to make out the expert as he approached the rug and switched on his black light.

The jury sighed and Mrs. Westermann sank back in her chair as big lime green splotches suddenly glowed all over the rug.

The jury was out less than thirty minutes. Their verdict? “The defendant is not liable for negligence.”

I thanked them for performing their civic duty, explained how the clerk would sign statements to take back to employers for those that needed them, then released them from further jury duty for two years.

Since this case had been expected to last two days, there was nothing else on my docket, and I adjourned for the day at a little past three.