The Justice Game

42

Kelly skipped her morning swim on Monday. She put on a black skirt with a gray suit jacket and understated earrings. She wore the same sports watch with a small blue Velcro strap that she wore during her swimming workouts.

It took her three and a half hours to reach the Hilton hotel on the Virginia Beach boardwalk at 30th Street. She would have preferred taking depositions in the plush B amp;W conference rooms, but Melissa Davids wouldn’t come to D.C. Rather than get in a big fight and have to postpone the deposition, which was no doubt exactly what Davids wanted, Kelly had agreed to drive to Virginia Beach.

To add insult to injury, Jason Noble had told Kelly that his office wasn’t yet furnished, so they would have to use a hotel conference room. After a heated exchange about who should pay, they agreed to split the costs.

Kelly arrived half an hour early to stage the room. The videographer and court reporter both wanted to know where the witness would be sitting. “At that end of the table,” Kelly said, pointing toward the end with the view. She wanted Davids looking out at the ocean-maybe it would distract her. Kelly would tell Jason that the lighting for the video would work better this way.

The witness and her lawyers didn’t bother showing up until ten minutes after the scheduled start time. They hadn’t called Kelly to let her know they would be late and gave no excuses once they finally arrived. There were terse introductions and handshakes. Jason Noble’s hand was cold and clammy.

Melissa Davids looked smaller and older than she had when Kelly met her on the set of Fox News. She wore jeans and a sweater, and her hair was pulled back from her face. Case McAllister had on a classic gray suit, monogrammed cuffs on his shirtsleeves, his trademark bow tie, and a pair of scuffed cowboy boots. Jason Noble must have gotten the dress casual so it looks like we’re not worried memo from Davids. He wore jeans and a blue pin-striped shirt rolled up at the sleeves. He tried to project a casual everyman image, right down to the lack of socks.

A beach thing, no doubt.

As Kelly Starling worked her way through the preliminary questions, Jason leaned back in his chair and sized her up. Even in her cross-examination mode, she had that fresh, all-American thing going-smooth skin, intriguing brown eyes, and perfect white teeth. Some intensity came from the angular jawline and the eyes that narrowed as she fired questions at Davids, using the clipped tone of a prosecutor. She was five or six years older than Jason, experienced enough to know what she was doing but young enough to hold the attention of the young men on the jury.

Today, she was all business.

Melissa Davids got off to a good start. She never took her eyes off Starling, paused before each answer, and volunteered no extraneous information. Jason began to relax just a little. Maybe she didn’t need his coaching after all.

In law school evidence class, Jason and his classmates had studied the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and discussed how arrogant and evasive Bill Gates looked during his deposition. The lesson, according to Jason’s professor, was that even smart CEOs needed a prep session.

That professor had apparently never met the stubborn and self-confident Melissa Davids.

“Let me turn your attention to the MD-9,” Kelly said. At trial, she planned to bring in a replica gun and parade it all over the courtroom. But depositions weren’t quite so conducive to grandstanding.

“I wondered when you might get around to that,” Davids said.

“A recent study by the Tidewater Times found that this gun ranks fourth among assault guns traced by the ATF to violent crimes. Are you aware of that?”

“I don’t read the Tidewater Times, ” Davids sneered.

“Your company has had some trouble with the ATF, haven’t you?”

“We’ve never been convicted of a single violation.”

“That wasn’t my question. Your company has had some trouble with the ATF, haven’t you?”

“Objection,” Jason said, “asked and answered.”

“That’s the problem,” Kelly said. “It wasn’t answered.”

Davids stared at Kelly for a few seconds. “I think it was.”

“Okay. Then let’s walk through it. A few years before the assault weapons ban, the MD-9 was redesigned when the ATF went to court to pull your firearms manufacturing license, isn’t that right?”

“The ATF went to court to revoke our license. We settled the case when we got tired of spending money on lawyers. So yes, we slightly redesigned the MD-9 to address their concerns. But the settlement agreement specifically denied any liability.”

“The ATF was upset because people buying the MD-9 could easily convert it into an illegal fully automatic machine gun in a matter of minutes using only a file, isn’t that right?”

Davids scoffed. “You can convert fertilizer into a bomb, too. That doesn’t make fertilizer manufacturers criminals.” She turned and looked at the camera. “We sold it as a semi-automatic. What people did when they got it home was their business.”

Kelly leaned forward. The witness was getting under her skin. “How many converted MD-9s were traced to crimes?”

“I have no idea.”

“More than ten?”

“Who knows?”

“More than a hundred?”

“Could be.”

“More than a thousand?”

“She said she doesn’t know,” Jason interjected, still leaning back in his chair. He didn’t have a single piece of paper on the table in front of him, as if this proceeding was too inconsequential to even take notes.

“Maybe this will refresh your memory,” Kelly said. She slid a document to Melissa Davids and provided Jason with a copy. She asked the court reporter to mark the document as an exhibit.

“Can you tell me what that document is?” Kelly asked.

“A brief filed by the ATF in the case we’ve been discussing.”

“Please look at page three, the second paragraph. How many MD-9s had been converted into fully automatic weapons and traced to crimes?”

“Eight hundred thirty-three,” Davids said.

“And that didn’t concern you?”

Davids scoffed. “We redesigned the gun so this couldn’t happen. Is that so hard to understand?”

Kelly felt her face redden, the anger rising to the surface. “Just answer the question. Did this fact concern you?”

“Criminals sometimes modify our guns. Criminals sometimes use them to kill innocent people. Every time somebody dies, that concerns me. However, my hope is that sometime before this deposition is over, you might actually want to talk about whether it’s fair to try and hold us accountable for everything these criminals do.”