Marine One

32

THE AFTERNOON DRAGGED on forever. When Brightman sat at the counsel table on the other side of Rachel, a lot of whispering and scratching of pencils came from the journalists. He had never appeared at any proceeding before, although his name was on the pleadings. The legal press wondered whether I was being elbowed out of the way in the middle of trial. They loved the reputation drama that surrounded every major trial. I sat there dutifully taking notes like a cub associate as Hackett put on two expert witnesses that afternoon: his economist, who testified about the president's likely career earnings, and his accident reconstructionist. Hackett was being smart. First build the sympathy with the widows, then show the jury the value, then you explain the liability. Easy stuff first. Brightman's cross-examinations were fine. The reconstructionist did as expected and essentially recited the preliminary NTSB report, adopting their conclusions and performing retests or identical analysis where necessary to be able to testify about it. He was polished and left the jury believing everything he said was correct.

We went back to our large conference room at the end of the day. The power had shifted to Brightman. He was fielding all the questions, telling everyone how he was going to handle the next day's witnesses.

I interjected into the discussion, "Kathryn, one thing we might consider is a settlement offer."

She was shocked. "We're at the absolute nadir of our case; you think now's the time to approach them?"

I nodded. "We need to get the conversation started."

Brightman shook his head. "I couldn't disagree more. I'd suggest we motor through this. If they want to try to come after us for punitive damages, maybe that would be the time to approach Hackett. Then we'll-"

"No, you don't get it. We found one of the tip weights."

The room want completely silent. "What?" Kathryn stared at me, looking betrayed. "When? When were you going to tell me?"

"Couple of weeks ago. Went up in the tree. There was a tip weight embedded in the branch. Half of a tip weight. It had fractured."

"Meaning it failed and caused the accident?"

Brightman was speechless. "You started this trial knowing there was critical evidence against us… and didn't tell the other side or the court? Are you kidding me? Is that your fourth theory? It's all our fault and we're screwed?"

Kathryn looked pale. "What are you doing, Mike? This could get you sanctioned. The court could enter judgment against WorldCopter for this alone."

"I thought I'd hear from Bradley. I asked him to run some additional tests on it before we turned it over. Nothing destructive. I just can't get ahold of him. I'm afraid for him, with what happened to Tinny. So I thought we should approach Hackett now, with him thinking we just don't like the evidence. Once he gets wind of this broken tip weight, he'll never settle."

Kathryn slouched in her chair, rested her head against the wall with her eyes closed, and said, "Call Hackett."

I dialed the hotel where Hackett was staying, where he had leased one of the ballrooms as his "war room." It was probably as much square footage as my whole office building. I asked for Hackett's ballroom. One of Hackett's associates picked up the phone.

"Hi, this is Mike Nolan. Is Tom Hackett there please?"

"Mike Nolan?"

"Right."

"Um, yeah. Hold on one second." I heard his hand go over the receiver. Kathryn indicated to me to put it on speakerphone, which I did. Hackett came on the line.

"This is Tom Hackett, is that you, Mike?"

"Good evening, Tom, yes, it is."

There was a pause. "You've got me on the speakerphone. Is there anyone else in the room listening to this?"

"Yes. That's why you're on speakerphone. I want them to hear you."

"Please tell me the name of everybody in the room or this conversation is over."

I rolled my eyes, then went around the room and told him everyone who was there.

He said, "An august group. I am honored. What can I do for you?"

"When you and I last spoke on the telephone, we had discussed settlement. I wondered if you had any interest in further discussions."

"Are you serious?"

"Quite."

"So let me get this right. I made a settlement demand at the outset of this case for one billion dollars. You rejected that and essentially told me I was out of my mind. That's fine. I can live with that. But now, after you've had your head handed to you in jury selection, the first few witnesses, and the experts, you come asking to talk settlement?"

"Look, before we get all the way through this trial and send this case to the jury, we wanted to call and see if you've come to your senses yet and are prepared to discuss settlement."

"My senses? I made a settlement demand to you a long time ago, and I am not about to discuss settlement over the phone. But if you and Kathryn come over here right now, we can discuss our positions and see if there is any point in negotiations. But you must be here within fifteen minutes. I have work to do and a case to try."

I glanced at Kathryn, who shrugged, then nodded reluctantly. "We'll be right there."

I drove Kathryn to the hotel. Neither of us said a word. We parked in the hotel parking lot, went in through the lobby, and back to the ballroom, where I had attended numerous bar receptions and balls. A security guard standing at the door recognized us and opened the door. When we walked into the room, I was stunned. It was the most impressive high-tech legal setup I had ever seen. Desks with oversize flat-screen monitors were everywhere. A big-screen TV in the middle in the back-had to be seventy-two inches-had been split into four quadrants to see four networks that were following the trial, including Court TV, CNN, MSNBC, and FOX. They were all giving it essentially twenty-four-hour coverage. Hackett undoubtedly had a PR person feeding the media theories and information all the time. That person was probably sitting in the ballroom as we entered.

A huge white screen on the right side with an ELMO set up was probably used to practice the use of the trial exhibits to make sure they projected well across a large room like the courtroom. A PowerPoint projector sat next to the ELMO and a DVD player. In this mini-court, Hackett and others could practice witness examination and evidence presentation. All his associates and paralegals had their own desks and computers and were busily working. In the middle was a square conference table with six chairs set up around it. We stood there waiting for someone to recognize us. Finally, Greg Bass came over and greeted us. He pointed us to the conference table. We walked to it and stood by it. Presently, Hackett came out from behind a large black curtain or screen that I had not previously noticed but which undoubtedly constituted his office. The aluminum framing had high-quality black curtains that set up a square-walled office that took up an eighth of the ballroom in the corner. Bright lights could be seen shining from behind the curtain. Hackett had his coat off and his tie loosened. He looked more fit than I thought he was. He walked over to the conference table and extended his hand to Kathryn. "Good evening, Ms. Galbraith. I'm glad you could come over."

She shook his hand. "My pleasure."

He turned to me and shook my hand. "Mike, good to see you."

"Evening."

"Please, sit down," he said. "Would you like some coffee or tea?"

Kathryn and I both shook our heads.

"All right, then let's get down to business. You called me about settlement. What do you have in mind?"

Kathryn glanced at me, leaned forward on the table with her hands folded, and said, "We're not stupid. I realize that so far the evidence has not gone our way."

Hackett tried not to smile.

"We think that will change when it's our turn to put on evidence, but even if it doesn't, the value of your cases will not change. I'm prepared to offer you the full policy limits for settling all the cases. Two hundred fifty million dollars."

Hackett shook his head slowly. "That's a quarter of my demand before I filed, before discovery. This accident was your client's fault. That's just as clear as it could be now. The value of the cases hasn't gone down. You just heard my economist testify about what President Adams would have earned after his second term. This was not a president who was going to sit around as a former president and play golf or build rocking chairs. If he gave a speech every night, he could earn a million a week!" Hackett leaned forward for emphasis. "He was going to change the way former presidents lived. He was going to contribute to the economy and become a CEO of a major corporation. Kathryn, did you not hear what my economist said? Think Exxon. You know how much the CEO of Exxon made last year?" Hackett continued without hesitating, "Well, I'll tell you. He made three point six in salary, three point nine in bonuses, and twenty-eight in stock awards. That's in millions, by the way. That's a total of thirty-five and a half million dollars for one year. You think maybe President Adams wouldn't have done a stinky oil company? How about Wal-Mart then. Thirteen point one million dollars. You think maybe a bank? Citigroup perhaps? Try thirty-three million dollars. Maybe he'd run a hedge fund in New York. Some of those guys pull down five hundred million dollars a year. Maybe something more family-friendly? Mouse Ears, say? Eight million. You want to know what a former president will make? Well, how about Clinton? While his wife was running in the Democratic primaries, she disclosed their tax returns. Seven years, one hundred nine million dollars-and not much of that is from her Senate salary. So that's not too bad. I think you get the idea. Multiply any of those by his remaining work life, and you get the idea of why my settlement demand is going nowhere but up.

"Then you have the great American hero, the Marine pilot of Marine One, who was shot in the jaw in Iraq and came back to fly the president around. You've got your crack attorney here accusing him of being a homosexual or something-"

"I said nothing of the kind."

"Yeah? Well, you sure implied there was something mischievous or unhealthy about their relationship. So on the one hand you've got President Adams, who was going to set a new world record for earnings after leaving the presidency, and you've got the most sympathetic plaintiffs in the history of American civil litigation. So two hundred and fifty million dollars is a joke, Kathryn. We'll get six hundred million dollars in economic damages, minimum. Then the jury will double it for general damages, loss of companionship, society, and consortium. That's one point two billion. And then we'll go back and ask them for punitives. My prediction is they'll award twice what they already did, for another two point four billion, a total of three point six billion. I could be wrong. They might use a multiplier of, say, ten, and award twenty-four billion for punitive damages. This jury is just waiting to punish this evil foreign corporation that killed their president. As you both know, under Campbell vs. State Farm, the Supreme Court believes the multiplier of actual damages to punitives must be less than ten in order to comply with constitutional due process. Okay. I'll give you six-even though I'm going to ask for more than that from the jury at the end of this trial. Six times three point six is twenty-one point six billion dollars. So you want my demand? My demand to settle this case tonight-for all plaintiffs-twenty billion dollars."

Kathryn was stunned. "You're out of your mind."

"Really? Who's been right so far, Kathryn? You could have resolved the case before it got filed. Your policy, a bunch thrown in by WorldCopter-which seems only fair-and it would have been done. But as usual, you weren't thinking big enough. You thought this would be some ten-million-dollar case and didn't take my demand seriously. Fine!" Hackett threw his hands up. "You don't have to. But don't come crying to me now saying I'm being unreasonable. You had your chance."

I was furious. He was toying with us, trying to humiliate us. I felt uncontrollable anger welling up, which if left unchecked would result in my punching him in the face. I looked over his head at the curtain behind him to avoid looking at his smug expression.

Kathryn replied, "This conversation is over. What you've demanded is insane. I don't see the point in even offering the policy to you. So even if we could-"

"We're done. Here." He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote $20 billion on it. "Give this to your insured. To WorldCopter. Tell them this is my demand." He gave it to me. "You are obligated under the ethical code, Mr. Nolan, to convey this offer to your clients. To WorldCopter. It will be open an unpredictably short time, and I will withdraw it when I feel like it. Since you said the conversation is over, Kathryn, I will take you at your word. Good night."

He walked back to his curtained office.

Kathryn and I left and headed back to my office in a silence even deeper than that which had enveloped us on our way to the meeting. As I pulled into my parking spot in front of my building, my secret cell phone buzzed in the glove box. I reached across Kathryn's skirt and opened it. I pulled out the phone and looked at the screen on the front, which said new text message. I opened the phone and read, May have found something. WB.

When I headed home that night, I texted Bradley from my phone and asked him for clarification, which was not forthcoming. I then called him, trying to figure out where he was and what he was doing, and again, no response. That made me wonder if he had been kidnapped and his cell phone was now being used to torment me. Tinny Byrd killed, Wayne Bradley kidnapped. Not likely. But it was hard to get to sleep.

I spent most of that night wondering what Bradley had found and where he was. If I had thought about other things, I might have seen coming what happened the next morning. I'd have wondered why Hackett had insisted on our coming over to his "office." I assumed it was to impress us.

When I got to the office at six thirty the next morning, Dolores was there and handed me USA Today and the Baltimore Sun. Both had nearly identical headlines: WORLDCOPTER BEGGING FOR MERCY?

Hackett had undoubtedly notified his PR hack, who almost certainly called a reporter or two and told them to station themselves somewhere in the hotel lobby or outside the hotel. They saw Kathryn and me approach and were left to speculate on why the two of us would be at Hackett's office at ten o'clock at night in between two important trial days. The only conceivable reason would be to discuss settlement. Which, of course, was true. I could just hear the conversation with the PR hack and the journalists. Be where? In front of the hotel. Why? Interesting people will arrive. What people? You'll see. Why are they coming? To testify? They're part of the trial. To discuss the trial? At ten o'clock at night? To settle? No comment.

WorldCopter had gone ballistic when Kathryn had told them that they could settle the case by chipping in a mere $19.75 billion dollars to WorldCopter's insurance-policy limits of $250 million. Wednesday of that week was perhaps the worst day. Hackett had completed his case and he rested. Nothing had gone wrong, we hadn't really dented any of his witnesses or experts, nor had we challenged his theory, at least during his case. The media was proclaiming victory all the way around and wondering why we didn't just pay Hackett Whatever he was asking for. Of course they didn't know what he was asking for, and if they had, they would have been horrified, or at least I hope they would have. And Bradley was nowhere to be found.

That night though, things turned. The usual weary group was in our conference room when I received an e-mail on my BlackBerry. It was the word that I had told Bradley to e-mail me when I needed to go outside and check my cell phone in my car.

I excused myself as if I were going to the bathroom, walked down the stairs, and out to my car. I sat down in the passenger seat and opened the glove box. I took out the phone and read the text message: Call me ASAP. WB. I dialed his cell phone and waited for him to pick up. I could tell by the background noise that he was driving when he answered. Before he even greeted me, he said, "Mike. You're not going to believe this. Are you at the office?"

"I'm sitting in my car. Where the hell have you been?"

"I'll tell you all about it. Can you meet me at my lab?"

"Sure, I guess. What do you have?"

"I've got to show you. I'm heading there now. When can you get there?"

"I don't know, maybe forty-five minutes."

"See you then."

"Oh, one other thing. You've got to call WorldCopter. You know that other Marine One, the helicopter they have in their hangar out there, the one behind that Plexiglas wall?"

"What about it?"

"You gotta get me in there. Tonight. With tools. Get Whatever permission you need. Get Marcel, get whoever you need. Have them meet us out there. And don't tell anybody else. Nobody. I mean nobody."

"I'll see what I can do. I've got to sneak out of here somehow. See you at your lab."

I hung up and grabbed some paper out of the glove compartment. I wrote notes to Marcel and Rachel: Meet me at the WorldCopter hangar at 10:00 PM. No questions. Do not let anyone follow you. I went back inside and back to the conference room. I said to Brightman, "So you're going to start with our meteorologist tomorrow morning, just laying the groundwork on the severity of the storm and the like?"

"Yes. I'd guess that's the safest way to begin. We need to warm the jury up to the idea of listening to what we have to say. The meteorologist has nothing controversial, so I think we'll start with him."

"Got it. Look, I told Wayne Bradley to be here tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, so I think I'll stay back and prepare him. We can put him on second?"

Brightman hesitated. "Maybe. We haven't really talked about who was going to take him. I was kind of assuming I would."

"I think I need to take him."

"I thought he'd gone quiet on us."

"I finally reached him. He'll be ready. I just want to prepare him, and then we'll have him ready to go in the afternoon."

Brightman had his arms folded and tapped his lips with his finger as if he were thinking. I knew what he was really thinking: how does he break it to me that I'm not going to do anything for the rest of the trial? I was going to let him think that as long as he wanted. As long as I had time to do what I needed to do. I asked Brightman to put a list of order of witnesses on the board so we could all agree how we were going to present the case. Everyone's eyes turned to the whiteboard, and I slipped the notes to Rachel and Marcel. They both read the notes and glanced at me with quizzical looks. I nodded, confirming I meant what I said.

I told Brightman that since he was prepared for the morning and I wouldn't be needed till the afternoon, I was going to catch up on some sleep and excused myself.

I headed toward my house, then turned sharply and floored my Volvo to head toward Bradley's lab.