The Litigators

CHAPTER 21


As scheduled by Judge Seawright’s clerk, the depositions of Finley & Figg’s Krayoxx clients began promptly at 9:00 a.m. in a ballroom of the Downtown Marriott. Since the defendant, Varrick Labs, was picking up the tab for the depositions, there was a generous spread of rolls and pastries, along with coffee, tea, and juice. A long table had been arranged with a video camera at one end and a witness chair at the other.

Iris Klopeck was the first witness. She had called 911 the day before and rode in an ambulance to the hospital, where they treated her for arrhythmia and hypertension. Her nerves were shot, and she told Wally several times she could not go through with the lawsuit. He mentioned, more than once, that if she could tough it out, she would soon be receiving a large check, “probably a million bucks,” and this helped somewhat. Also helping was a supply of Xanax, so when Iris took the witness chair and looked at the legion of lawyers, she was fairly glassy-eyed and drifting off to la-la land. Still, she at first froze and looked helplessly at her lawyer.

“It’s just a deposition,” Wally had repeated. “There’ll be a lot of lawyers there, but they’re nice people, for the most part.”

They didn’t look nice. To her left was a line of intense young men in dark suits and frowns. They were already scratching away on their yellow legal pads, and she hadn’t said a word. The nearest lawyer to her was an attractive woman who smiled and helped Iris settle down. To her right were Wally and his two sidekicks.

The woman said, “Ms. Klopeck, my name is Nadine Karros, and I’m the lead lawyer for Varrick Labs. We’re going to take your deposition over the next two hours, and I want you to try to relax. I promise I will not try to trick you. If you don’t understand a question, don’t answer it. I’ll just repeat it. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Iris said, seeing double.

Next to Iris was a court reporter who said, “Raise your right hand.” Iris did so, then swore to tell the truth.

Ms. Karros said, “Now, Ms. Klopeck, I’m sure your attorneys have explained that we are making a video of your deposition, and this might be used in court if for some reason you’re unable to testify. Do you understand this?”

“I think so.”

“So if you’ll look at the camera when you talk, we’ll do just fine.”

“I’ll try, yes, I can do that.”

“Great. Ms. Klopeck, are you currently taking any medication?”

Iris stared at the camera as if waiting for it to tell her what to say. She took eleven pills a day for diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, erratic heartbeat, arthritis, kidney stones, and a few other ailments, but the one she worried about was Xanax because it could affect her mental state. Wally had suggested she skip any discussion about Xanax if asked the question, and here, right off the bat, Ms. Karros was digging.

She giggled. “Sure, I’m on a lot of meds.”

It took fifteen minutes to straighten them out, with no help from the Xanax, and just when Iris got to the bottom of the list, she remembered another one and blurted, “And I used to take Krayoxx but not anymore. That stuff’ll kill you.”

Wally roared with laughter. Oscar thought it was funny too. David suppressed a chuckle by looking directly across the table at the stone-faced boys from Rogan Rothberg, not a single one of whom would allow himself even a grin. But Nadine smiled and said, “Is that all, Ms. Klopeck?”

“I think so,” she said, still not sure.

“So, you’re taking nothing that would affect your judgment, memory, or ability to give truthful answers?”

Iris glanced at Wally, who hid behind a legal pad, and for a second it was obvious that something was going unsaid. “That’s correct,” Iris said.

“Nothing for depression, stress, panic attacks, anxiety disorders?”

It was as if Ms. Karros were reading Iris’s mind and knew she was lying. Iris was about to choke when she said, “Not normally.”

Ten minutes later they were still grappling with “not normally,” and Iris finally admitted that she popped a Xanax “every now and then.” She proved sufficiently elusive, though, when Ms. Karros tried to pin her down on her Xanax use. She stumbled when she referred to the drug as her “happy pills,” but plowed on. In spite of her thick tongue and drooping eyelids, Iris assured the wall of lawyers to her left that she was clearheaded and ready to roll.

Address, birth dates, family members, employment, education, the deposition quickly sank into tedium as Nadine and Iris fleshed out the Klopeck family, with emphasis on Percy, the departed. Iris, with increasing lucidity, managed to choke up twice when talking about her beloved husband, dead now for almost two years. Ms. Karros probed into Percy’s health and habits—drinking, smoking, exercise, diet—and as much as she tried to whip the old boy into shape, Iris did a fair job of portraying him with accuracy. Percy came across as a fat, sick man who ate bad food, drank too much beer, and rarely left the sofa. “But he quit smoking,” Iris added at least twice.

They took a break after an hour, and Oscar excused himself, saying he had to be in court, but Wally was suspicious. He had arm-twisted his senior partner to show up at the depositions, sort of a show of force in the face of the ground troops Rogan Rothberg would send in, though it was doubtful the presence of Oscar Finley would rattle the defense. When fully manned, the Finley & Figg side of the table had three lawyers, now minus one. Ten feet away, on the other side, Wally counted eight.

Seven lawyers to sit and take the same notes while one did the talking? Ridiculous. But then Wally began thinking, as Iris droned on, that perhaps the show of force was a good thing. Perhaps Varrick was so worried that they had instructed Rogan Rothberg to spare no expense. Maybe Finley & Figg had them on the ropes and didn’t realize it.

When they resumed the deposition, Nadine prompted Iris to begin talking about Percy’s medical history, and Wally zoned out. He was still irritated that Jerry Alisandros had once again skipped the proceedings. At first, Alisandros had big plans to attend the depositions with his entourage, to make his first dramatic entrance into the case, to do battle with Rogan Rothberg and stake out some turf. But another last-minute urgency, this one in Seattle, proved more important. “It’s only depositions,” Alisandros told an agitated Wally on the phone the day before. “Pretty basic stuff.”

Basic indeed. Iris was talking about one of Percy’s old hernias.

David’s role was limited. He was there as a warm body, a real lawyer taking up space, but with little to do but scribble and read. He was reviewing an FDA study on lead poisoning in children.

Occasionally, Wally would politely say, “Objection. Calls for conclusion.”

The lovely Ms. Karros would stop and wait to make sure Wally was finished, then she would say, “You may answer, Ms. Klopeck.” And by then, Iris would tell her all she wanted to hear.

Judge Seawright’s strict two-hour time limit was obeyed. Ms. Karros asked her last question at 10:58, then graciously thanked Iris for being such a good witness. Iris was going for her purse where the Xanax was kept. Wally walked her to the door and assured her she had done a superb job.

“When do you think they’ll want to settle?” she whispered.

Wally put a finger to his lips and shoved her out.

Next up was Millie Marino, widow of Chester and stepmother of Lyle, the inheritor of the baseball card collection and Wally’s initial source of information about Krayoxx. Millie was forty-nine, attractive, somewhat fit, reasonably well dressed, and apparently unmedicated, a far cry from the last witness. She was there for her depo, but she was still not a believer in the lawsuit. She and Wally were still bickering over her late husband’s estate. She was still threatening to pull out of the lawsuit and find another lawyer. Wally had offered to guarantee, in writing, a million-dollar settlement.

Ms. Karros asked the same questions. Wally made the same objections. David read the same memo and thought, Only six more after this one.

After a quick lunch, the lawyers reconvened for the deposition of Adam Grand, the assistant manager of an all-you-can-eat pizza house whose mother had died the previous year after taking Krayoxx for two years. (It was the same pizza house Wally now frequented, but only to secretly leave copies of his “Beware of Krayoxx!” brochures in the restrooms.)

Nadine Karros took a break, and her number two, Luther Hotchkin, handled the deposition. Nadine, though, apparently loaned him her questions because he asked the same ones.

During his insufferable career at Rogan Rothberg, David had heard many tales about the boys in litigation. The litigators were a breed apart, wild men who gambled with huge sums of money, took enormous risks, and lived on the edge. In every large law firm, the litigation section was the most colorful and filled with the biggest characters and egos. That was the urban legend anyway. Now, as he glanced occasionally across the table at the solemn faces of his adversaries, he had serious doubts about the legend. Nothing he had ever experienced in his career was as monotonous as sitting through depositions. And this was only his third one. He almost missed the drudgery of plodding through the financial records of obscure Chinese corporations.

Ms. Karros was taking a break, but she missed nothing. This early round of depositions was nothing more than a little contest, a pageant to provide her and her client the opportunity to meet and examine the eight contestants and select a winner. Could Iris Klopeck withstand the rigors of an intense two-week trial? Probably not. She was stoned during her depo, and Nadine had two associates already working on her medical records. On the other hand, some jurors might have great sympathy for her. Millie Marino would make an impressive witness, but her husband, Chester, could potentially have the strongest link to heart disease and death.

Nadine and her team would finish the depos, watch them again and again, and slowly eliminate the better ones. They and their experts would continue to dissect the medical records of the eight “victims” and eventually select the one with the weakest claim. When they picked their winner, they would race to court with a thick, cold-blooded, and well-reasoned motion to separate. They would ask Judge Seawright to take the single case they wanted, place it on his Rocket Docket, and clear all obstacles between it and a trial by jury.

Minutes after 6:00 p.m., David bolted from the Marriott and almost ran to his car. He was punch-drunk and needed his lungs full of cold air. Leaving downtown, he stopped at a Starbucks in a strip mall and ordered a double espresso. Two doors down was a party store that advertised costumes and favors, and, as had become his habit, he wandered over for a look. No party store was safe from him, or Helen, these days. They were searching for a set of Nasty Teeth, in the wrapper, with names of corporations in fine print. This one had the usual inventory of cheap costumes, gag gifts, decorations, glitter, toys, wrapping paper. There were several sets of vampire teeth, made in Mexico and sold by a company called Mirage Novelties of Tucson.

He was familiar with Mirage, even had a small file on the company. Privately owned, sales last year of $18 million, most of its products along the same lines of what David was now inspecting. He had files on dozens of companies that specialized in cheap toys and gadgets, and his research was growing daily. What he had not found was another set of Nasty Teeth.

He paid three bucks for a set of fangs, to add to his growing collection, then drove to the Brickyard Mall, where he met Helen at a Lebanese restaurant. Over dinner, he refused to describe his day—the same ordeal was planned for tomorrow—so they chatted about her classes and, not surprisingly, the coming addition to their family.

Lakeshore Children’s Hospital was nearby. They found the ICU, then found Soe Khaing in a visitors’ room. He had relatives with him, and introductions were made, though neither David nor Helen caught a single name. The Burmese were visibly touched that the Zincs would stop by and say hello.

Thuya’s condition had changed little in the past month. The day after their visit to the family’s apartment, David had contacted one of the doctors. After he e-mailed the paperwork signed by Soe and Lwin, the doctor was willing to talk. The boy’s outlook was bleak. The level of lead in his body was highly toxic, with substantial damage to his kidneys, liver, nervous system, and brain. He was in and out of consciousness. If he survived, it would take months or years to gauge the level of impaired brain activity. Normally, though, with this much lead, children did not survive.

David and Helen followed Soe down the hall, past a nurse’s station, and to a window where they could see Thuya strapped to a small bed and hooked to an astonishing assortment of tubes, lines, and monitors. His breathing was aided by a respirator.

“I touch him once a day. He hear me,” Soe said, then wiped the moisture from his cheeks.

David and Helen stared through the window but could think of nothing to say.