Impasse Read online

  “I think there’s a screwdriver in the miscellaneous drawer,” Pauline replied, tilting her head toward a bank of aging cabinets without looking up.

  “Can’t you call Sitzman?”

  “We get one hundred dollars off our rent if we don’t call the landlord for thirty days, and we’re on day twenty-four.”

  Stu put down his car keys, loosened his tie, and headed for the cabinet. He fished around inside and came up with the screwdriver, an extra from his own home that he’d donated to the cause.

  “Clay’s in his office,” Pauline mentioned as Stu passed her on his way back to the broken door.

  Stu glanced at the clock: ten minutes after eight. Clay was never in his office before nine. “What’s the occasion?”

  “I don’t know.” She paused dramatically. “Maybe it’s the letter we received from Shubert, Garvin and Ross.”

  The Molson case! Stu thought. Their best chance yet at breaking out of their scrape-and-hustle private practice funk. Two weeks earlier Stu had sent a demand letter outlining the reasons that Shubert, Garvin and Ross should settle for an amount that might just fix their broken elevator and door. If things go right, it could buy us an entirely new elevator, and perhaps a new building to go around it.

  He’d been checking the mail every day for a response and, apparently, Clay was sitting in his office casually mulling it over with his morning coffee.

  “Good news?”

  Pauline gave him a coy shrug.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Molson case was a hot potato that had bounced around town, with at least two other more prominent firms passing on it. The client, Sylvia Molson, had been crossing in front of a Mazda Miata stopped at an intersection when the defendant, Yuri Blastos, struck the Miata from the rear with his hulking Nissan Armada, a vehicle so big it was named after a fleet of ships. It catapulted the diminutive sports car onto Sylvia, snapping her neck at the second vertebra. He’d been drinking, and fault was easy to establish. The defendant, however, was judgment proof—he had no money. He was also uninsured. Sylvia, a yoga instructor and mother of two, was suddenly in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Her own auto insurance paid her the limits of her policy for an uninsured motorist, but it would not be nearly enough for her care.

  But Sylvia was a chipper, optimistic woman. She’d wheeled into Buchanan, Stark & Associates and been undeterred by the broken elevator; she yelled up the back stairwell until Pauline had come down to find her stuck at the bottom of the steps. Stu had carried her up the stairs himself, then hurried off to review the case while Clay signed her on as a client.

  Stu wasn’t optimistic that he would find something two other teams of lawyers had missed, especially because Buchanan, Stark hadn’t dealt with many personal injury cases. Their biggest had been a severed finger. Lost digits were assigned different values under the law—a thumb being the amputated digit jackpot—and all they’d gotten was a measly pinky.

  The police reports said that Blastos had consumed eight beers over three hours and had blown a .11 on the breathalyzer machine, well over the .08 legal limit. He hadn’t slowed at the intersection, judging from the absence of skid marks prior to the point of impact. He was at fault, no doubt.

  Blastos worked as an inspector for Septi-Spect, a small company that inspected septic systems. Septi-Spect was, in turn, owned by Jennings Plumbing, an international company. Jennings had deep pockets—they could pay for a catastrophic injury. But the state police report did not attribute any fault to Jennings. Blastos was driving his own car at the time of the collision, not an inspection vehicle. He was not on his way to or from an inspection site. According to the report, he was neither working as an employee at the time nor acting on the company’s behalf. In fact, he’d gotten off work three hours earlier, and the company had a strict policy against drinking when their drivers were working. They were 100 percent not responsible for any accident caused by off-duty drinking. No doubt. Complete dead end. Multiple prior lawyers had said so.

  But Stu hadn’t given up, or, more accurate, he hadn’t had enough other work to keep himself otherwise occupied. He made a motion to obtain Blastos’s cell phone records, even though it was well established that his company phone was hanging on a hook at the office at the time of the crash, where he put it every day when he left work.

  But Stu didn’t request the man’s company phone records. He requested his private cell phone records. Stu didn’t even know if there was a private cell phone. It turned out there was. And there was one call on the day of the collision. It came in at 5:15 p.m., thirty-two seconds before Sylvia Molson lost the use of all her limbs. When Stu received the cell records, he called the number. The dispatcher at Septi-Spect answered.

  Bingo!

  Although Septi-Spect had a long-standing written policy against drinking and driving, it did not yet have a policy against talking and driving. They’d meant to update their guidelines, they said, but hadn’t gotten around to it. In other words, they were aware of the problem and did nothing about it until it was too late for Sylvia Molson. To make matters worse, they had a custom of calling their drivers en route to sites in order to alert them to inspection appointment changes. They were making just such a call to Blastos to tell him about an appointment change the next morning.

  Bingo again!

  It still wasn’t enough. There was the alcohol problem. Did the Septi-Spect cell phone call cause the wreck or did the alcohol? If it was the alcohol, then Blastos owed, and he had no money. If it was the cell phone, Jennings, Inc. and their millions in assets could be tapped for the cost of Sylvia’s injuries.

  This was where joint and several liability came in, a legal principle that law nerds, like Stu, found fascinating. Stu named both Blastos and Jennings, Inc. in the lawsuit. If the jury found Jennings partially liable, say even 1 percent, Blastos and Jennings would be responsible for the entire verdict jointly. Normally, Blastos would have to pay 99 percent and Jennings 1 percent. However, the joint and several rule was designed to make the plaintiff whole. If Blastos couldn’t pay his 99 percent—and he certainly couldn’t—then Jennings was responsible for paying the entire amount to Sylvia. Jennings, in turn, was permitted to go after Blastos for indemnification. But so long as Sylvia got paid, they could damn well take it out of his turd-inspecting wages for the next few centuries, as far as Stu was concerned.

  This was Stu’s theory of the case, and his demand letter laid it out in painstaking detail so that Jennings would know exactly what they were up against when considering whether to settle. He included a vivid quote from Sylvia describing the enduring image of a small blue sports car taking flight and blocking out the sun.

  “Bad news, pal,” Clay said, propping his feet on the desk as Stu walked into his office. “I’m going to have to fire you.”

  Clay wore an aging navy suit, yet he made it look good, filling out his fitted white shirt with a healthy chest. He also had hair that never seemed to need combing, but simply fell into place. Stu’s own shirts were a boxy traditional cut, which helped to hide holiday weight gains. And he could comb his hair for an hour without ever getting it to fall right; although, at his age, he supposed he should just be thankful he didn’t have a horseshoe of thin hair framing a shiny bald spot.

  “You can’t fire me,” Stu replied. “We’re partners. We’d have to dissolve.”

  “Like a body in acid.”

  “Morbid, but yeah. Now, show me the letter.”

  Clay held it up, teasing. “You sure you want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll give you a hint. They think your theory of liability is novel.”

  Stu gritted his teeth, annoyed. “So now they’ll move for summary judgment and try to dismiss our case? Fine. Bring it on. But if we get past the motion, we’ll have sufficient leverage to settle. Their exposure could be more than our demand letter requested. Sylvia is going to need care for the rest of her life.”

  Clay laughed. “You and your legal speak. It
’s so cute. We all know they don’t want a crippled plaintiff in front of a jury.”

  “Quadriplegic. Please practice not saying crippled.”

  “I don’t think I’ll need to practice.” Clay finally handed over the letter.

  Stu ripped it from his partner’s hands like a kid reclaiming a stolen love letter. In the middle of the neatly printed page of thick linen paper from Shubert, Garvin & Ross et al. resided an awful run-on sentence, typical of lawyers. Stu skipped to the bottom. Below the horrific sentence was a single number. A big number.

  “Oh my,” Stu said quietly.

  “Oh yes,” Clay replied. “It appears your novel theory has scared the proverbial shit out of them.”

  Stu read the counter offer again, while Clay extracted from his desk a bottle of Booker’s bourbon—126 proof and sixty bucks a bottle. Clay poured Stu a glass and one for himself. The one for himself was symbolic—he was on the wagon. After downing his own tumbler of Booker’s served neat, Stu read the letter once more, carefully. The sentence was still awful, but it didn’t modify the number.

  “Just one sentence and a number?” Stu said.

  “Just that number.”

  “Wow. Sylvia is going to be pleased.”

  “Fuck Sylvia and her motorized golf cart. I’m pleased!”

  “I am too. This is a good result.”

  Clay smiled. “A good result? It seems to me that thirty-three percent of nine million is somewhere around three million, if I’m not mistaken. That’s better than good. That’s fucking awesome.”

  Stu frowned.

  Clay’s smile disappeared. “Why are you frowning? Don’t frown. I hate it when you frown.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Obviously, I don’t have an extensive background in mathematics, but if you grab a calculator, I think you’ll find that I’m right on this one.”

  Stu was accustomed to explaining the law to Clay, who often neglected its finer points. It was a daily ritual, good news or bad. But Stu was not adept at softening blows, which was one of the reasons Clay handled the clients. Stu hardly noticed the devastating effect his words were having on his partner.

  “Remember that attorney with the bushy hair in Fall River? Roger Rodan?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Last year Rodan challenged another lawyer’s contingent fee as excessive on appeal, and he won. Now, by law, even a contingent fee must reflect either the work done or the risk involved. In our case, we wrote one demand letter. And we didn’t invest more than nominal cash to pursue it. Very little work. No risk. Ergo, no basis for a three-million-dollar fee. If we had borrowed money to do extensive discovery or we had written briefs and gone to motion, that would be a different story. But we didn’t. And the courts especially frown on a windfall fee when the plaintiff needs the money for their care, versus, say, when a punitive award is given. And Sylvia definitely needs the money for her care.”

  “What are you saying? We don’t get our thirty-three?”

  “Not if Sylvia contests it. No. The court would reverse it and give us what they consider ‘reasonable’ under the law.”

  “She won’t contest it. She’ll be delighted with six million.”

  “Others might ask the question. Her family. Her friends. And if she, or someone on her behalf, did contest our fee, it would likely result in disciplinary action by the bar under the unreasonable fee provision of ethics rule two-point-one. We’d risk formal reprimand or even a license suspension.”

  “I can take that risk.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You mean you won’t.”

  “Right, I won’t.”

  “What if we reject this offer? Can you win the motion that justifies a higher fee?”

  “Sylvia would have to reject the offer.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. But she loves you. Better yet, she doesn’t understand a fucking word of your legal jargon. She’ll do whatever we advise.”

  “And I’d advise her to take this. It’s a good offer. It meets her needs and minimizes her legal fees.”

  “Our fees! It minimizes our fees!”

  Stu finally heard the panic in his partner’s voice and tried to offer some consolation. “I think we might be able to justify charging four hundred thousand dollars. It’s a stretch, but…”

  “Two hundred for each of us?”

  “Yeah. Minus taxes. Minus overhead.”

  “Minus my right arm and my left testicle. You’re making this sound better all the time.”

  “You want the truth, don’t you?”

  “Sure. Keep going, sunshine.”

  “Listen, it’s almost two years’ salary for a week’s work. Our rent is suddenly no longer an issue, at least for a year or two. I can get the stupid elevator fixed, or at least the door, for God’s sake. Pauline will stop bitching for a raise, because we can finally give it to her. You can probably even pay off that BMW you should never have bought. We ought to be happy with that. Look at me: I’m happy. I’m smiling and taking slugs of your ridiculous whiskey.” Stu fought to maintain his grin as he sipped the fiery tonic, contorting his face in a way that should have amused his partner.

  But Clay’s dark eyes narrowed, the playful light in them extinguished. “It’s just that my half of three million would change my life,” he mumbled. “Two hundred doesn’t. I’ll wake up tomorrow the same goddamned guy I am today, only with the rent paid through next December.”

  Stu hadn’t contemplated a life change. He might have won at trial and gotten more, a lot more, but it was a safe, clean, substantial payday that he’d created from nothing, and they were doing the right thing.

  “Well,” Stu said, “here’s to paying the rent.”

  Stu raised his tumbler. Clay didn’t meet his toast. He ignored the glass in favor of staring out the window, as though watching his dream drift away with the passing clouds. Then he turned to stare past the tumbler at Stu himself. It was a curious stare, like that of a bird deciding whether a grain on the ground might be a seed, or merely sand, before plucking it up to eat. “It seems we’re at a bit of an impasse,” he said.

  Stu braced himself for further argument.

  But then Clay sighed. His mood seemed to pass, and he clinked his own tumbler against Stu’s. “All right. It saddens me to say this, but if you won’t let me get rich this way, I’ll just have to find another.”

  Stu was relieved that Clay had processed the defeat and acclimated. Adaptation was his partner’s best trait, and it served him well; he could not be kept down for long. He did, however, drain his symbolic glass of 126-proof whiskey in one gulp.

  CHAPTER 3

  When Stu arrived home, Katherine was wrapping up a workout with five other sweaty women from the South Dartmouth Athletic Club, the gym she’d insisted they join for a lifetime initiation fee of ten thousand dollars, plus regular dues that rivaled a car payment. She’d argued that if Stu met one client there, the club would pay for itself. The trouble was he didn’t go, he didn’t meet anyone, and, thus, it didn’t pay for itself. Instead Katherine went, Katherine met people, and they paid for it each month.

  The living room was a sea of brightly colored Lycra. All wives of professionals. Some were rich, and the others thought they were, except for Katherine, who considered life in their not-quite-two-thousand-square-foot home at the east end of William Street in South Dartmouth akin to abject poverty. The others all lived on the waterside of Rockland—on Flagship Drive or Mosher Street or the ocean-view end of William, overlooking Clark’s Cove.

  Margery Hanstedt was busily perspiring on their leather couch in a pink unitard, but Katherine wasn’t likely to say anything; Margery owned three restaurants. She was married with kids, but was also a ferocious flirt and wore makeup to the gym to advertise it. Holly Plynth was married to a doctor. Jenny Plantz-Werschect was a doctor. Stu recognized the fourth woman in the blue shorts and should have remembered her name, but couldn’t—an increasingly common problem as he approached forty
. He wondered momentarily if his memory lapses were due to his age or the fact that the identities of people wandering in and out of his life simply didn’t matter much anymore. Unless the person was a relative or a client, they were just another face in the parade of humanity that came and went. There was no romantic intrigue to be had—he was married—and, without children, he had no connection to parents. He tried not to make eye contact with Blue Shorts so he wouldn’t have to guess her name or reintroduce himself.

  Katherine smiled when he entered, a bigger smile than she spent on him when he found her alone. She was more generous with affection when others were present. A bit backward, now that Stu thought about it.

  “Stu! We just finished a session of extreme power-cross. Jill is from the SAC, but she does home training.” Katherine gestured toward a harsh-looking woman in a sports bra cinched so tight it squished her chest as flat as the trio of angry abs below it. She looked serious and expensive—she almost certainly charged extra to do house calls. “Jill, this is my husband, Stu.” Katherine lowered her voice. “He doesn’t work out.”

  “I bike,” Stu said defensively.

  “Stationary bike,” Katherine clarified, as though it didn’t count. “In front of the TV.”

  “I watch sports while I ride.” In the presence of six exercising women it sounded better than admitting he watched Weird Worlds on the Syfy channel and only flipped to football when Katherine walked in.