The Appeal

When they answered Jackson, Mississippi, he had no reaction to the place.

"Ever been there?" one of them asked.

"I’ve passed through a couple of times," Spano said. This, from a registered voter, a licensed driver, and a current appellant before the state’s supreme court. Though Spano was never seen at Meyerchec’s bar, it appeared as if the two men were indeed a couple. They shared the same address, a bungalow on Clark Street.

The law students had continued to call and visit the near empty apartment in Jackson, with no response. Forty-one days earlier, while knocking on the door, they stuck a piece of junk mail into a small gap near the doorknob. It was still there; the door had not been opened.

The old Saab had not been moved. One tire was flat.

Gilbert became captivated by the story and pursued it doggedly. The attempt to get married in Mississippi smelled like a cynical ploy to thrust the same-sex marriage issue to the forefront of the McCarthy-Fisk race. And only McCarthy was getting hurt.

Gilbert badgered the radical lawyer who represented Meyerchec and Spano, but got nowhere. He dogged Tony Zachary for two days but couldn’t get a word. His phone calls to Ron Fisk and his campaign headquarters went unanswered. He spoke to both Meyerchec and Spano by phone, but was quickly cut off when he pressed them on their ties to Mississippi. He gathered a few choice quotes from Nat Lester, and he verified the facts dug up by the law students.

Gilbert finished his report and sent it in.

Chapter 30

The first fight was over the question of who would be allowed in the room. On the defense side, Jared Kurtin had full command of his battalion and there were no problems.

The brawl was on the other side.

Sterling Bintz arrived early and loudly with an entourage that included young men who appeared to be lawyers and others who appeared to be leg breakers. He claimed to represent over half of the Bowmore victims, and therefore deserved a lead role in the negotiations. He spoke with a clipped nasal voice and in an accent quite foreign to south Mississippi, and he was instantly despised by everyone there. Wes settled him down, but only for a moment. F. Clyde Hardin watched from the safety of a corner, crunching a biscuit, enjoying the argument, and praying for a quick settlement. The IRS was now sending registered letters.

A national toxic tort star from Melbourne Beach, Florida, arrived with his support staff and joined in the debate. He, too, claimed to represent hundreds of injured people, and, since he was a veteran of mass tort settlement, he figured he should handle things from the plaintiffs’ side.

The two class action lawyers were soon bickering over stolen clients.

* There were seventeen other law firms jockeying for position. A few were reputable personal injury firms, but most were small-town car-wreck lawyers who had picked up a case or two while sniffing around Bowmore.

Tensions were high hours before the meeting began, and once the yelling started, there was the real possibility of a punch being thrown. When the voices were sharpest, Jared Kurtin calmly got their attention and announced that Wes and Mary Grace Payton would decide who sat where. If anyone had a problem with that, then he and his client and its insurance company would walk out the door with all the money. This calmed things down.

Then there was the issue of the press. At least three reporters were on hand to cover this "secret" meeting, and when asked to leave, they were quite reluctant. Fortunately, Kurtin had arranged for some armed security. The reporters were eventually escorted out of the hotel.

Kurtin had also suggested, and offered to pay for, a referee, a disinterested person well versed in litigation and settlements. Wes had agreed, and Kurtin found a retired federal judge in Fort Worth who worked part-time as a mediator. Judge Rosenthal quietly assumed control after the trial lawyers had settled down. It took him an hour to negotiate the seating. He would have the chair at the end of the long table. To his right, halfway down and in the center, would be Mr. Kurtin, flanked by his partners, associates, Frank Sully from Hattiesburg, two suits from Krane, and one from its liability insurance carrier. A total of eleven at the table for the defense, with another twenty packed behind them.

To his left, the Paytons sat in the center, opposite Jared Kurtin. They were flanked by Jim McMay, the Hattiesburg trial lawyer with four death cases out of Bowmore.

McMay had made a fortune on the fen-phen diet pill litigation and had participated in several mass settlement conferences. He was joined by a lawyer from Gulfport who had similar experience. The other chairs were taken by Mississippi lawyers who had legitimate cases from Bowmore. The class action boys were shoved into the background. Sterling Bintz voiced his objection to his placement in the room, and Wes angrily told him to shut up. When the leg breakers reacted badly, Jared Kurtin announced that the class actions were the lowest priority on Krane’s list, and if he, Bintz, hoped to collect a dime, then he should keep quiet and stay out of the way.

"This ain’t Philadelphia," Judge Rosenthal said. "Are those bodyguards or lawyers?"

"Both," Bintz snapped back.

"Keep them under control."

Bintz sat down, mumbling and cursing.

It was 10:00 a.m., and Wes was already exhausted. His wife, though, was ready to begin.

For three hours nonstop they shuffled papers. Judge Rosenthal directed traffic as client summaries were produced, copied next door, reviewed, then classified according to the judge’s arbitrary rating system: death was Class One, confirmed cancer was Class Two, all others were Class Three.

A stalemate occurred when Mary Grace suggested that Jeannette Baker be given first priority, and thus more money, because she had actually gone to trial. Why is her case worth more than the other death cases? a trial lawyer asked.

"Because she went to trial," Mary Grace shot back with a hard gaze. In other words, Baker’s lawyers had the guts to take on Krane while the other lawyers chose to sit back and watch. In the months before the trial, the Paytons had approached at least five of the other trial lawyers present, including Jim McMay, and practically begged them for help. All declined.

"We will concede that the Baker case is worth more," Jared Kurtin said. "Frankly, I’m unable to ignore a $41 million verdict." And for the first time in years, Mary Grace actually smiled at the man. She could have hugged him.

At one, they broke for a two-hour lunch. The Paytons and Jim McMay sat away in a corner of the hotel restaurant and tried to analyze the meeting so far. Going in, they were consumed with the question of Krane’s intent. Was it serious about a settlement?

Or was it a stunt to push along the company’s agenda? The fact that the national business papers knew so much about the secret settlement talks made the lawyers suspicious.

But so far Mr. Kurtin had given every indication that he was a man on a mission.

There had been no smiles from the Krane suits or the insurance boys, perhaps a sign that they were about to part with their money.

At 3:00 p.m. in New York, Carl Trudeau leaked the word that the negotiations were progressing nicely down in Mississippi. Krane was optimistic about a settlement.

Its stock closed the week at $16.50, up $4.00.

At 3:00 p.m. in Hattiesburg, the negotiators reassumed their positions, and Judge Rosenthal started the paper mill again. Three hours later, the initial accounting was complete. On the table were the claims of 704 people. Sixty-eight had died of cancer, and their families were blaming Krane. A hundred and forty-three were now suffering from cancer. The rest had a wide range of lesser illnesses and afflictions that were allegedly caused by the contaminated drinking water from the Bowmore pumping station.