The King of Torts

According to the ad, the screening would take place the following day at a motel north of town and would be conducted by a medical doctor, a real physician. It was free. It was available to any person who had taken benafoxadil, aka Skinny Bens. It was confidential. And it might lead to the recovery of some money from the manufacturer of the drug.

At the bottom of the page, in smaller print, the name, address, and phone number of the D.C. Law Offices of J. Clay Carter II were given, though by the time most readers got that far they had either quit or were too excited about the screening.

Nora Tackett lived in a mobile home a mile outside Larkin. She did not see the ad because she did not read newspapers. She read nothing. She watched television sixteen hours a day, most of the time while eating. Nora lived with the two stepchildren her ex-husband had left behind when he hit the road two years earlier. They were his kids, not hers, and she was still not sure exactly how she’d come to possess them. But he was gone; not a word, not a dime for child support, not a card or a letter or a phone call to check on the two brats he’d forgotten when he fled. And so she ate.

She became a client of J. Clay Carter when her sister saw the Larkin Gazette and arranged to come fetch her for the screening. Nora had taken Skinny Bens for a year, until her doctor had stopped prescribing the drug because it was no longer on the market. If she’d lost any weight with the pills, she couldn’t tell.

Her sister loaded her into a minivan and thrust the full-page ad in front of her. "Read this," MaryBeth demanded. MaryBeth had started down the road to obesity twenty years earlier, but a stroke at the age of twenty-six had been her wake-up call. She was tired of preaching to Nora; they’d fought for years. And they began fighting as they drove through Larkin and headed for the motel.

The Village Inn had been selected by Oscar Mulrooney’s secretary because it appeared to be the newest motel in town. It was the only one on the Internet, which hopefully meant something. Oscar had slept there the night before, and as he had an early breakfast in the motel’s dirty cafe he wondered once again how he’d fallen so far so fast.

Third in his class at Yale Law School! Wined and dined by the blue-chip firms on Wall Street and the heavyweights in Washington. His father was a prominent doctor in Buffalo. His uncle was on the Vermont Supreme Court. His brother was a partner in one of the most lucrative entertainment law firms in Manhattan.

His wife was embarrassed that he was off again in the boondocks chasing cases. And so was he!

His tag-team partner was a Bolivian intern who spoke English but did so with an accent so thick even his "Good Mornings" were hard to understand. He was twenty-five and looked sixteen, even in his green hospital scrubs, which Oscar insisted he wear for credibility. Med school had been on the Caribbean island of Grenada. He’d found Dr. Livan in the want-ads and was paying him the stiff sum of $2,000 a day.

Oscar handled the front and Livan took care of the back. The motel’s only meeting room had a flimsy folding partition that the two of them had fought with to unwrinkle and pull across the room, dividing it roughly in half. When Nora entered the front at eight forty-five, Oscar glanced at his watch, then said, as pleasantly as possible, "Good morning, ma’am." She was fifteen minutes early, but then they usually showed up before the starting time.

The "ma’am" was something he caught himself practicing as he drove around D.C. It was not a word he’d been raised with.

Money in the bank, he said to himself as he looked at Nora. At least three hundred pounds and probably pushing four hundred. Sad that he could guess their weight like a huckster at a carnival. Sad that he was actually doing it.

"You the lawyer?" MaryBeth asked, with great suspicion. Oscar had been through it a thousand times already.

"Yes ma’am, the doctor’s in the back. I have some paperwork for you." He handed over a clipboard with questionnaires designed for the simplest of readers. "If you have any questions, just let me know."

MaryBeth and Nora backed into folding chairs. Nora fell heavily into hers; she was already sweating. They were soon lost in the forms. All was quiet until the door opened again and another large woman peered in. She immediately locked on to Nora, who was staring back, a deer in headlights. Two fatties caught in their quest for damages.

"Come in," Oscar said with a warm smile, very much the car salesman now. He coaxed her through the door, shoved the forms into her hands, and led her to the other side of the room. Between two hundred fifty and two hundred seventy-five pounds.

Each test cost $1,000. One out of ten would become a Skinny Ben client. The average case was worth between $150,000 and $200,000. And they were picking up the leftovers because 80 percent of the cases had already found their way into law offices around the country.

But the leftovers were still worth a fortune. Not Dyloft money, but millions anyway.

When the questions were answered, Nora managed to get to her feet. Oscar took the forms, reviewed them, made sure she’d actually taken Skinny Bens, then signed his name somewhere on the bottom. "Through that door, ma’am, and the doctor is waiting."

Nora walked through a large slit in the partition; MaryBeth stayed behind where she commenced to chat up the lawyer.

Livan introduced himself to Nora, who understood nothing of what he said. Nor could he understand her either. He took her blood pressure, and shook his head with displeasure – 180 over 140. Her pulse was a deadly 130 per minute. He pointed to a set of industrial meat scales, and she reluctantly stepped on – 388 pounds.

Forty-four years old. In her condition, she would be lucky to see her fiftieth birthday.

He opened a side door and led her outside where a medical van was parked and waiting. "We do the test in here," he said. The rear doors of the van were open; two sonographers were waiting, both in white jackets. They helped Nora into the van and arranged her on a bed.

"What’s that?" she asked, terrified, pointing at the nearest device.

"It’s an echocardiogram," one said, in English she could understand.

"We scan your chest with this," said the other, a woman, "and we take a digital picture of your heart. It’ll be over in ten minutes."

"It’s painless," added the other.

Nora closed her eyes and prayed that she would survive.

The Skinny Ben litigation was so lucrative because the evidence was so easy. Over time, the drug, which ultimately did little to help lose weight, weakened the aorta. And the damage was permanent. Aortic insufficiency, or mitral valve regurgitation, of at least 20 percent was an automatic lawsuit.

Dr. Livan read Nora’s printout while she was still in prayer, and gave a thumbs-up to the sonographers: 22 percent. He took it up front where Oscar was shuffling paperwork for a whole room full of prospects. Oscar returned with him to the back, where Nora was now seated, looking pale and gulping orange juice. He wanted to say, "Congratulations, Ms. Tackett, your aorta has been sufficiently damaged," but the congratulations were only for the lawyers. MaryBeth was summoned and Oscar walked them through the litigation scenario, hitting only the high points.

The echocardiogram would be studied by a board-certified cardiologist whose report would be filed with the class-action administrator. The compensation scale had already been approved by the Judge.

"How much?" asked MaryBeth, who seemed more concerned about the money than her sister. Nora appeared to be praying again.

"Based on Nora’s age, somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars," Oscar said, omitting, for the moment, that 30 percent would go to the Law Offices of J. Clay Carter II.