- •The Runaway Jury
- •It was no ordinary tobacco case, and everyone in the room knew it.
- •It was a herniated disc, and he had a letter from his doctor. He was excused and left the courtroom in a hurry.
- •In short, the plaintiff would prove cigarette smoke, because it contains natural carcinogens, and pesticides, and radioactive particles, and asbestos-like fibers, causes lung cancer.
- •It was the dumbest thing he'd ever done, and now at the age of fifty-one, he was dying for it. Please, he implored between coughs, if you're smoking, stop.
- •It was not possible, and Cable knew it. He had two experts ready for rebuttal in the event Fricke stepped out of bounds and speculated too much.
- •If Harkin suddenly called a short recess, the man would probably vanish.
- •In response to the story, Pynex's stock dipped a dollar at the opening bell, but by noon had found itself sufficiently corrected and adjusted and was deemed to be weathering the brief storm.
- •It was twenty-five thousand, and Taunton wrote this figure on his legal pad. The script called for Teaker to speak at this point. “Damned trial lawyers. They're a blight on society.”
- •In the jury room, no one moved but Nicholas. He walked to the door, said, “Who is it?”
- •In clear English, the offending section read: “During each conjugal visit, each juror may spend two hours, alone and in his or her room, with his or her spouse, girlfriend, or boyfriend.”
- •If His Honor had a chip on his shoulder, it didn't last long. After a few uncertain hellos and good mornings, he said, starting badly, “I'm a little bit disturbed by this.”
- •In fact, everything was flexible.
- •It was Friday. There would be no reactions from the jury.
- •If Easter accessed the clerk's computer, then he certainly could tamper with it enough to have his own name entered as a prospective juror in the Wood case.
- •Instinctively, he bolted upright, shocked by the suggestion. “Of course not!”
- •If Hoppy didn't know for sure, then he certainly was sympathetic to Cristano and his fine friends in Washington. “Yes, yes,” he said, hanging'on every word.
- •Vandemeer didn't answer, but instead studied the legs of a young waitress taking an order at the next table.
- •Vandemeer chewed on a tiny piece of grilled chicken. “Why don't you just pick out nine jurors and give them a million bucks apiece?” he said, with a quiet laugh as if he were only joking.
- •It was the worst time of the day for a direct examination-the first hour after lunch-when Jankle took his seat on the witness stand and resumed his testimony.
- •If Marlee and Nicholas could bounce Herrera on a whim, who might be next? If they were doing this solely to get Fitch's attention, then they were surely successful.
- •If they only knew, Hoppy thought, still quite proud of himself. “Well, I showed Millie the memo on Robilio,” he said, not knowing how much of the truth he should tell.
- •If Hoppy couldn't convince his own wife, how the hell was he supposed to influence an entire jury?
- •It was only a hunch that Fitch was working on Millie through Hoppy. They seemed like such a nice, good-hearted pair; the type Fitch could easily snare in one of his insidious plots.
- •It was awful. He forged ahead.
- •It was Local's opinion that she had legally changed her name in another state, just pick one of the other forty-nine, then moved to Lawrence with a fresh identity.
- •It would be a disaster, no question about it.
- •It was the death certificate. Dr. Evelyn y. Brant had died of lung cancer.
- •It took a moment for the zeros to settle in. Lonnie jumped to his feet and walked by the table. “You people are crazy,” he said just loud enough to be heard, then left the room, slamming the door.
- •In hindsight, her timing was perfect. The market bottomed soon after it crashed, and by the end of the day Pynex was holding steady at forty-five.
- •187 Библиотека «Артефакт»—http://andrey.Tsx.Org/
Vandemeer didn't answer, but instead studied the legs of a young waitress taking an order at the next table.
“We're doing everything possible,” Fitch said, with uncharacteristic warmth. But Vandemeer was scared, and rightly so. Fitch knew the pressure was enormous. A large plaintiff's verdict wouldn't bankrupt Pynex or Trellco, but the results would be messy and far-reaching. An in-house study predicted an immediate twenty percent loss in shareholder value for all four companies, and that was just for starters. In the same study, a worst-case scenario predicted one million lung cancer lawsuits filed during the five years after such a verdict, with the average lawsuit costing a million dollars in legal fees alone. The study didn't dare predict the cost of a million verdicts. The doomsday scenario called for the certification of a class-action suit, the class being any person who had ever smoked and felt injured because of it. Bankruptcy would be a possibility at that point. And it would be probable that serious efforts would be made in Congress to outlaw the production of cigarettes.
“Do you have enough money?” Vandemeer asked.
“I think so,” Fitch said, asking himself for the hundredth time just how much his dear Marlee might have in mind.
“The Fund should be in good shape.”
“It is.”
Vandemeer chewed on a tiny piece of grilled chicken. “Why don't you just pick out nine jurors and give them a million bucks apiece?” he said, with a quiet laugh as if he were only joking.
“Believe me, I've thought about it. It's just too risky. People would go to jail.”
“Just kidding.”
“We have ways.” ' Vandemeer stopped smiling. “We have to win, Rankin, you understand? We have to win. Spend whatever it takes.”
A WEEK EARLIER, Judge Harkin, pursuant to another written request from Nicholas Easter, had changed the lunch routine a bit and declared that the two alternate jurors could eat with the twelve.
Nicholas had argued that since all fourteen now lived together, watched movies together, ate breakfast and dinner together, then it was almost ludicrous to separate them at lunch. The two alternates were both men, Henry Vu and Shine Royce.
Henry Vu had been a South Vietnamese fighter pilot who ditched his plane in the China Sea the day after Saigon fell. He was picked up by an American rescue vessel and treated at a hospital in San Francisco. It took a year to smuggle his wife and kids through Laos and Cambodia and into Thailand, and finally to San Francisco, where the family lived for two years. They settled in Biloxi in 1978. Vu bought a shrimp boat and joined a growing number of Vietnamese fishermen who were squeezing out the natives. Last year his youngest daughter was the valedictorian of her senior class. She accepted a full scholarship to Harvard. Henry bought his fourth shrimp boat.
He made no effort to avoid jury service. He was as patriotic as anyone, even the Colonel.
Nicholas, of course, had befriended him immediately. He was determined that^Henry Vu would sit with the chosen twelve, and be present when the deliberations began.
WITH A JURY blindsided by sequestration, the last thing Durwood Cable wanted was to prolong the case. He had pared his list of witnesses to five, and he had planned for their testimony to run no more than four days.