Pleading guilty

PLEADING GUILTY

18 November TO: Robert Kamin, Gage amp; Griswell FROM: John A. K. Eiger, General Counsel,

TransNational Air

RE: First Wave 397 Settlements I wanted to advise you of a flap concerning the 397 settlement payments which arose while you were trying the Grainger claim. As usual, the plaintiffs' lawyers are fighting with each other about litigation expenses. It seems that Peter Neucriss engaged a firm in Cambridge, Mass., called Litiplex for litigation support -apparently they provided crash reconstruction, computer modeling, consulting engineers, expert testimony, analysis of the NTSB proceedings, and records management. Litiplex has a series of invoices outstanding totaling about $5.6 million. Neucriss says he hired them with the consent of all lead counsel for the class and says I agreed at the time of the settlement that Litiplex would be paid from the 397 fund. The class lawyers say there was no such agreement – not too surprising, since paying Litiplex off the top, as Neucriss is demanding, will reduce the class lawyers' fee by about half a million dollars. Both sides are threatening to take up the issue with Judge Bromwich. I am very much afraid that Bromwich will ask for an accounting, which will lead to discovery of the fund surplus. Rather than take that risk, and accepting that I may have made a commitment to Neucriss, I'll authorize payment of Litiplex's invoices as a below-the-line charge against the surplus. Please deliver the following checks to me.

Attached was a listing of Litiplex invoice numbers and the amounts supposedly due.

I no longer had to look for what Bert had transmitted to Glyndora. 'Per the attached, re agreement with Peter Neucriss…' This, clearly, was it. But I read the memo three or four more times as I sat there in Martin's empty office, feeling as if somebody had put a cold hand on my heart. I kept asking myself the same thing, the voice within speaking in the forlorn tones of a child. What was I going to do now?