The King of Torts

"I’d like to go to trial," Clay said.

"If what I read is correct, you don’t know where the courthouse is."

"I can find it."

A shrug. "You probably won’t have to. When I get finished with Goffman they’ll run from every jury."

"I don’t have to settle."

"But you will. You’ll have thousands of cases. You won’t have the guts to go to trial."

And with that he slowly stood, reached out a limp hand, and said, "I have work to do."

Clay hustled from the office, down the hall, through the museum/lobby, and outside into the fierce desert heat.

Bad luck in Vegas and a disaster in Tucson, but the trip was salvaged somewhere over Oklahoma, at 42,000 feet. Ridley was asleep on the sofa, under the covers and dead to the world, when the fax machine began humming. Clay walked to the rear of the dark cabin and retrieved a one-page transmission. It was from Oscar Mulrooney, at the office. He’d pulled a story off the Internet – the annual rankings of firms and fees from American Attorney magazine. Making the list of the twenty highest-paid lawyers in the country was Mr. Clay Carter, coming in at an impressive number eight, estimated earnings of $110 million for the previous year. There was even a small photo of Clay with the caption: "Rookie of the Year."

Not a bad guess, Clay thought to himself. Unfortunately, $30 million of his Dyloft settlement had been paid in bonuses to Paulette, Jonah, and Rodney, rewards that at first had seemed generous but in hindsight were downright foolish. Never again. The good folks at American Attorney wouldn’t know about such bighearted bonuses. Not that Clay was complaining. No other lawyer from the D.C. area was in the top twenty.

Number one was an Amarillo legend named Jock Ramsey who had negotiated a toxic-waste-dump case involving several oil and chemical companies. The case had dragged on for nine years. Ramsey’s cut was estimated at $450 million. A tobacco lawyer from Palm Beach was thought to have earned $400 million. Another one from New York was number three at $325 million. Patton French landed at number four, which no doubt irritated him greatly.

Sitting in the privacy of his Gulfstream, staring at the magazine article featuring his photo, Clay told himself again that it was all a dream. There were 76,000 lawyers in D.C., and he was number one. A year earlier he had never heard of Tarvan or Dyloft or Maxatil, nor had he paid much attention to mass tort litigation. A year earlier his biggest dream was fleeing OPD and landing a job with a respectable firm, one that would pay him enough for some new suits and a better car. His name on a letterhead would impress Rebecca and keep her parents at bay. A nicer office with a higher class of clients would allow him to stop dodging his pals from law school. Such modest dreams.

He decided he would not show the article to Ridley. The woman was warming up to the money and becoming more interested in jewelry and travel. She’d never been to Italy, and she’d dropped hints about Rome and Florence.

Everybody in Washington would be talking about Clay’s name on the top twenty list. He thought of his friends and his rivals, his law school pals and the old gang at OPD. Mostly, though, he thought of Rebecca.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Hanna Portland Cement Company was founded in Reedsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1946, in time to catch the postwar explosion of new home construction. It immediately became the largest employer in the small town. The Hanna brothers ran it with iron fists, but they were fair to their workers, who were their neighbors as well. When business was good, the workers received generous wages. When things were slow, everybody tightened their belts and got by. Layoffs were rare and used only as a last resort. The workers were content and never unionized.

The Hannas plowed their profits back into the plant and equipment, and into the community. They built a civic center, a hospital, a theater, and the nicest high school football field in the area. Over the years, there was a temptation or two to sell out, to take serious cash and go play golf, but the Hanna brothers could never be sure that their factory would remain in Reedsburg. So they kept it.

After fifty years of sound management, the company employed four thousand of the eleven thousand residents of the town. Annual sales were $60 million, though profits had been elusive. Stiff competition from abroad and a slowdown in new housing starts were putting pressure on the income statement. It was a very cyclical business, something the younger Hannas had tried unsuccessfully to remedy by diversifying into related products. The balance sheet currently had more debt than normal.

Marcus Hanna was the current CEO, though he never used that title. He was just the boss, the number-one honcho. His father was one of the founders, and Marcus had spent his life at the plant. No less than eight other Hannas were in management, with several of the next generation out in the factory, sweeping floors and doing the same menial jobs their parents had been expected to do.

On the day the lawsuit arrived, Marcus was in a meeting with his first cousin, Joel Hanna, the unofficial in-house lawyer. A process server bullied his way past the receptionist and secretaries up front and presented himself to Marcus and Joel with a thick envelope.

"Are you Marcus Hanna?" the process server demanded.

"I am. Who are you?"

"A process server. Here’s your lawsuit." He handed it over and left.

It was an action filed in Howard County, Maryland, seeking unspecified damages for a class of homeowners claiming damages due to defective Portland mortar cement manufactured by Hanna. Joel read it slowly and paraphrased it for Marcus, and when he finished, both men sat for a long time and cursed lawyers in general.

A quick search by a secretary found an impressive collection of recent articles about the plaintiffs’ attorney, a certain Clay Carter from D.C.

It was no surprise that there was trouble in Howard County. A bad batch of their Portland cement had found its way there several years earlier. Through the normal channels, it had been used by various contractors to put bricks on new homes. The complaints were fresh; the company was trying to get a handle on the scope of the problem. Evidently, it took about three years for the mortar to weaken and then the bricks began to fall off. Both Marcus and Joel had been to Howard County and met with their suppliers and the contractors.

They had inspected several of the homes. Current thinking put the number of potential claims at five hundred, and the cost of repairing each unit at about $12,000. The company had product liability insurance that would cover the first $5 million in claims.

But the lawsuit purported to include a class of "at least two thousand potential claimants," each seeking $25,000 in actual damages.

"That’s fifty million," Marcus said.

"And the damned lawyer will rake forty percent off the top," added Joel.

"He can’t do that," Marcus said.

"They do it every day."

More generalized cursing of lawyers. Then some specifics aimed at Mr. Carter. Joel left with the lawsuit. He would notify their insurance carrier who would assign it to a litigation firm, probably one in Philadelphia. It happened at least once a year, but never one this big. Because the damages sought were much higher than the insurance coverage, Hanna would be forced to hire its own firm to work with the insurance company. None of the lawyers would be cheap.

The full-page ad in the Larkin Gazette caused quite a stir in the small town hidden from the world in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Because Larkin had three factories it had slightly more than ten thousand people, a regular population center in the mining country. Ten thousand was the threshold for full-page ads and Skinny Ben screening that Oscar Mulrooney had established. He had studied the advertising and arrived at the opinion that the smaller markets were being overlooked. His research had also revealed that rural women and Appalachian women were heavier than those in cities. Skinny Ben territory!