CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sunday morning dawned clear and sunny, and Mary sat at the conference table, trying not to think about the fact that John wasn’t alive to see this lovely day, but was instead lying on a stainless-steel table in the morgue, maybe being autopsied right now. Judy sat to her right, sad and solemn, her shoulders sloping downward in her cheery yellow T-shirt. She had tried to call William, but there had been no answer. Anne was placing a greaseboard on a large easel, so she could bring them up to speed on London Technologies. In truth, none of them felt like coming into the office this morning, but they’d had no choice because there was a deposition tomorrow. Bennie had come in, too, and she was in her office with Roger, working on their reverse-discrimination case.
Mary felt worried that Judy was in legal jeopardy, because sooner or later, Detectives Krakoff and Marks would find out that she had been at John’s apartment the day he was murdered. They had discussed it with Bennie and had sent Lou out canvassing today on John’s street, to see if anybody had seen or heard anything.
Mary shifted away from a beam of sunlight streaming through the window, which hurt her itchy eyes. They were just about to get started, now that she had updated Anne on the few details of John’s murder, and Judy had revealed to Anne that she’d been dating John. Anne had been as surprised as anyone else, but they talked it over and tried to start work.
“Okay, let’s begin.” Anne stood in front of the easel in a trim white sleeveless dress with her thick red hair in a bouncy ponytail, like the prettiest kindergarten teacher ever. “Mary, just so you know, I did try to get the deposition tomorrow postponed given the circumstances, but I couldn’t. The other side refused. I could ask the judge for a postponement and I think he would grant it, but I don’t want to ask him. I pick my battles.”
“I get it.”
“Besides, I don’t want to back up the deposition schedule, which is heavy, and I printed it out so you could put it in your calendars.” Anne handed them both a deposition schedule. “Of course, we’ve already taken depositions of some of the middle-management types, building the case from the bottom up, so when we depose the big guns, we’ll have the facts at our disposal. So the best is yet to come.”
“Or the hardest.”
“That too.” Anne smiled, still perky. “I emailed you both a copy of the Complaint and their Answer. You probably didn’t get a chance to read them.”
“We tried,” Mary answered, speaking for them both.
“I understand, no worries. It’s a massive Complaint, 134 pages, and their Answer is almost as long.” Anne plucked two thick packets off a stack of paper and gave one to Mary and the other to Judy. “I had copies made in case you want to follow along. I’ll take you through the basics and then Mary, I’ll tell you about the witness whose deposition you’ll be defending tomorrow.”
“Great, thanks.” Mary flipped through her copy of the Complaint, trying to remember what she had read, but so much had changed since then. Judy didn’t open her copy, but Mary knew that she didn’t have to, because she was smart enough to follow along. Even at half speed, Judy was smarter than anybody Mary had ever met.
“First, let me say, the good news is this case is a sure winner. We have the facts, we have the law, and as you’ll see, we have hard evidence of bad intent by the defendants. Our goal is a great settlement. We’d win at trial but that costs too much for these guys. That’s why the Complaint is so detailed. We put it all out there, setting up a great settlement.”
“And the bad news?”
“The bad news is it’s going to be superhard to run this case without John. But we have to try. We can do it if we pull together. Maybe.” Anne cleared her throat. “Now, London Technologies is our client, and we filed suit on its behalf in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against two defendants, Express Management Systems, or EXMS, and Home Hacks, Inc. We alleged that they violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which as you know is the antimonopoly provision of the federal antitrust law. We also allege violations of Pennsylvania law, which we’ll get into later. I’ll explain more about the parties later, but suffice it to say that this is a battle between David and Goliath, with us as David—and this time, there are two Goliaths.”
“We love the underdog, don’t we?” Mary smiled, trying to be supportive to Anne, who was rallying to explain a complicated lawsuit at the worst moment in their collective professional lives.
“The parties in this lawsuit are competitors in the data integration business. Specifically, they develop, manufacture, and sell software that integrates data for furniture dealerships all around the country. Now, you ask, what is data integration software?” Anne cocked her head, and her ponytail bounced. “Hold on, I’ll tell you.”
Mary sipped her coffee, pretending it was caffeinated. She’d spent most of her pregnancy pretending water was wine. Neither of these things was working, and only Jesus Christ could turn water into alcohol.
“Data is simply business information and data integration software allows a furniture dealership to use and analyze that information. They use data integration software for every aspect of their business, including personnel, payroll, accounting, inventory”—Anne counted off on her manicured fingernails—“pending and completed sales, financing, service, and importantly, customer information, such as secured identification and financial information, likes and dislikes, and purchase history.”
Mary tried to stay focused because she was the one defending the deposition tomorrow. She didn’t have to know every detail, but she had to know more than she knew now, which was nothing. Basically, she had to be able to hum a few bars.
Judy barely listened, but nobody blamed her.
“Let me explain briefly about the data integration market, which is the defined market for this lawsuit.” Anne uncapped her marker, turned to the greaseboard, and drew a big circle on the left, in which she wrote, DATA INTEGRATORS. “Okay, so here you see this circle is data integrators.”
“I got that part,” Mary chirped, trying to make Judy laugh, but it didn’t work.
“In this lawsuit, EXMS is the data integrator. That means they store and manage the information given to them in a database.” Anne drew a circle on the right and wrote APPLICATION PROVIDERS inside it, then drew an arrow from the Data Integrators circle to the Application Providers circle. “You may be wondering, what is an application provider? In our litigation, the other defendant, Home Hacks, is an application provider. Think of them like an app for your phone. They’re the friendly interface that connects to the dealerships. EXMS provides standardized data to Home Hacks. Follow me?”
“It this gonna be on the test?” Mary asked, and this time Judy smiled, so she felt rewarded.
“Very funny.” Anne was already drawing a third circle at the bottom of the grease board, so that the three circles formed a triangle balancing on its end. “This circle is the dealership. What connects the Application Providers to the dealerships? They perform services for the dealerships, and as I said, they’re like their app.”
Mary listened, with an eye on Judy.
“Now, for the final and most important part of the market.” Anne drew an arrow from DEALERSHIP to DATA INTEGRATORS, completing the third leg of the upside-down triangle. “What does the furniture dealership give to the data integrator, which is the crux of this litigation? It gives them the all-important, extremely valuable, raw business data. In other words, the dealership gives its raw business data to the data integrator and the data integrator puts it into its database, using its proprietary software.”