John Grisham

"Bone marrow transplants."

"All transplants, including bone marrow. Keep it, and use it at trial. I think you should ask the CEO why the policy was changed just a few months after the Blacks

filed suit. Why do they now specifically exclude bone marrow? And if it wasn’t excluded in the Black policy, then why didn’t they pay the claim? Good stuff, Rudy. Hell, I might have to come watch this trial."

"Please do." It’d be comforting to have a friend other than Deck available for consultation.

Max has some problems with our analysis of the claim file, and we’re soon lost in paperwork. I haul the four cardboard boxes from my trunk to the seminar room, and by noon the place resembles a landfill.

His energy is contagious. Over lunch, I get the first of several lectures on insurance company bookkeeping. Since the industry is exempt from federal antitrust, it has developed its own accounting methods. Virtually no competent CPA can understand a set of financials from an insurance company. They’re not supposed to be understood because no insurance company wants the outside world to know what it’s doing. But Max has a few pointers.

Great Benefit is worth between four hundred and five hundred million dollars, about half of it hidden in reserves and surpluses. This is what must be explained to the jury.

I don’t dare suggest the unthinkable, the notion of working on Christmas Day, but Max is gung-ho. His wife is in New York visiting her family. He has nothing else to do, and he sincerely wants to work our way through the remaining two boxes of documents.

I fill three legal pads with notes, and half a dozen cassette tapes with his thoughts about everything. I’m exhausted when he finally says we’re through, sometime after dark, December 25. He helps me repack the boxes and haul them to my car. Another heavy snow is falling.

Max and I say good-bye at the front door of the law school. I can’t thank him enough. He wishes me well, makes me promise to call him at least once a week before

the trial and once a day during it. He says again that there’s a chance he might zip down for it. I wave good-bye in the snow.

IT TAKES THREE DAYS to ramble my way to Spartan-burg, South Carolina. The Volvo handles beautifully on the road, especially in the snow and ice across the Upper Midwest. I call Deck once on my car phone. The office is quiet, he says. No one’s looking for me.

I’ve spent the past three and a half years studying long hours to get my law degree and working whenever I could at Yogi’s. I’ve had little time off. This low-budget journey around the country might seem boring to most folks, but for me it’s a luxurious vacation. It clears my head and soul, allows me to think of things other than the law. I unload some baggage, Sara Plankmore for one. Old grudges are dismissed. Life is too short to despise people who simply can’t help what they’ve done. The grievous sins of Loyd Beck and Barry X. Lancaster are forgiven somewhere in West Virginia. I vow to stop thinking and worrying about Miss Birdie and her miserable family. They can solve their own problems without me.

I go for miles dreaming of Kelly Riker and those perfect teeth and tanned legs and sweet voice.

When I do dwell on legal matters, I focus on the looming trial. There’s only one file in my office that could get anywhere near a courthouse, so there’s only one trial to think about. I practice my opening remarks to the jury. I grill the crooks from Great Benefit. I damn near cry as I plead my final summation.

I get a few stares from passing motorists, but hey, nobody knows me.

I’ve talked to four lawyers whoVe sued or are currently suing Great Benefit. The first three were no help. The fourth lawyer is in Spartanburg. His name is Cooper Jack-

son, and there’s something strange about his case. He couldn’t tell me on the phone (the phone in my apartment). But he said I was welcome to stop by his office and look at his file.

He’s in a bank building downtown, a firm with six lawyers in modern offices. I called yesterday from my car phone somewhere in North Carolina, and he’s available today. Things are slow around Christmas, he said.

He’s a burly man, with thick chest and thick limbs, dark beard and very dark eyes that glow and dance and animate every expression. He’s forty-six, and he tells me he made his money in product liability. He makes sure his office door is closed before he goes any further.

He’s not supposed to tell me most of what he’s about to tell me. He’s settled with Great Benefit, and he and his client signed a strict confidentiality agreement that provides severe sanctions if anyone discloses the terms of the settlement. He doesn’t like these agreements, but they’re not uncommon. He filed suit a year ago for a lady who developed a severe sinus problem and required surgery. Great Benefit denied the claim on the grounds that the lady had failed to disclose on her application the fact that she’d had an ovarian cyst removed five years before she bought the policy. The cyst was a preexisting condition, the denial letter read. The claim amounted to eleven thousand dollars. Other letters were swapped, more denials, then she hired Cooper Jackson. He made four trips to Cleveland, in his own plane, and took eight depositions.

"Dumbest and sleaxiest bunch of bastards I’ve ever run across," he says, talking about the folks in Cleveland. Jackson loves a nasty trial, and plays the game with no holds barred. He pushed hard for a trial, and Great Benefit suddenly wanted a very quiet settlement.

"This is the confidential part," he says, relishing the idea of violating the agreement and spilling his guts to me.

I’ll bet he’s told a hundred people. "They paid us the eleven thousand, then threw in another two hundred thousand to make us go away." His eyes twinkle as he waits for me to respond. It is truly a remarkable settlement because Great Benefit effectively paid a bunch of money in punitive damages. No wonder they insisted on nondisclosure.

"Amazing," I say.

"Yes it is. Me, I personally didn’t want to settle, but my poor client needed the money. I’m convinced we could’ve popped them for a big verdict." He tells a few war stories to convince me he’s made a ton of money, then I follow him to a small, windowless room lined with shelves rilled with identical storage boxes. He points to three of them, then leans his heavy frame against the shelves. "Here’s their scheme," he says, touching a box as if great mysteries are contained therein. "The claim comes in and is assigned to a handler, just a low-level paper pusher. The people in claims are the poorest trained, least paid of all. It’s that way in every insurance company. The glamour is over in investments, not claims or underwriting. The handler reviews it, and immediately begins the process of post-claim underwriting. He or she sends a letter to the insured denying the claim. I’m sure you have such a letter. The handler then orders the medical records for the past five years. The medicals are then reviewed. The insured gets another letter from claims saying, ‘Claim denied, pending further review.’ Here’s where it gets fun. The claims handler then sends the file over to underwriting, and underwriting sends a memo back to claims which says something like ‘Don’t pay this claim until you hear from us.’ There’s more correspondence between claims and underwriting, letters and memos back and forth, paperwork builds up, disagreements ensue, clauses and sub-clauses in the policy become hotly in dispute as these two

departments go to war. Keep in mind, these people work for the same company in the same building, but rarely know each other. Nor do they know anything about what the other department is doing. This is very intentional. Meanwhile, your client is sitting in his trailer getting these letters, some from claims, some from underwriting. Most people give up, and this, of course, is what they’re counting on. About one in twenty-five will actually consult a lawyer."