The Runaway Jury

Seated one row behind Taunton was Derrick Maples, making his first appearance at the trial. He’d left the motel just minutes after the bus, and had planned to spend the day looking for work. Now, he was dreaming of an easy payday. Angel saw him, but kept her eyes on Jankle. Derrick’s sudden interest in the trial was baffling. He’d done nothing but complain since they’d been sequestered.

Jankle described the various brands his company made. He stepped down and stood before a colorful chart with each of the eight brands,each with its tar and nicotine levels labeled beside it. He explained why some cigarettes have filters, some don’t, some have more tar and nicotine than others. It all boiled down to choice. He was proud of his product line.

A crucial point was made here, and Jankle conveyed it well. By offering such a wide selection of brands, Pynex allowed each consumer to decide how much tar and nicotine he or she wanted. Choice. Choice. Choice. Choose the level of tar and nicotine. Choose the number of cigarettes you smoke each day. Choose whether or not to inhale. Make the intelligent choice of what you do to your body with cigarettes.

Jankle pointed to a bright drawing of a red pack of Bristols, the brand with the second-highest level of tar and nicotine. He conceded that if Bristols were "abused" then the results could be damaging.

Cigarettes were responsible products, if used with restraint. Like many other products-alcohol, butter, sugar, and handguns, just to name a few-they could become dangerous if abused.

Seated across the aisle from Derrick was Hoppy, who had stopped by for a quick update on what was happening. Plus he wanted to see and smile at Millie, who was delighted to see him but also curious about his sudden obsession with the trial. Tonight the jurors were allowed personal visits, and Hoppy couldn’t wait to spend three hours in Millie’s room with sex the last thing on his mind.

When Judge Harkin stopped for lunch, Jankle was completing his thoughts about advertising. Sure his company spent tons of money, but not as much as beer companies or car companies or Coca-Cola. Advertising was crucial to survival in a fiercely competitive world, regardless of the product. Of course children saw his company’s ads. How do you design a billboard ad so that it won’t be seen by children? How do you keep kids from looking at the magazines their parents subscribe to? Impossible. Jankle readily admitted he’d seen the statistics showing eighty-five percent of the kids who smoke buy the three most heavily advertised brands. But so do adults! Again, you can’t design an ad campaign that targets adults without affecting kids.

FITCH WATCHED ALL of Jankle’s testimony from a seat near the back. To his right was Luther Vandemeer, CEO of Trellco, the largest tobacco company in the world. Vandemeer was the unofficial head of the Big Four, and the only one Fitch could tolerate. He, in return, had the perplexing gift of being able to tolerate Fitch.

They ate lunch at Mary Mahoney’s, alone at a table in a corner. They were relieved by Jankle’s success so far, but knew the worst was yet to come. Barker’s column in Mogul had ruined their appetites.

"How much influence do you have with the jury?" Vandemeer asked, picking at his food.

Fitch wasn’t about to answer truthfully. He wasn’t expected to. His dirty deeds were kept from everyone except his own agents.

"The usual," Fitch said.

"Maybe the usual is not enough."

"What are you suggesting?"

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.

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.

"What is your company doing to combat underage smoking?" Cable asked him, and Jankle rambled for an hour. A million here for this do-gooder cause, and a million there for that ad campaign. Eleven million last year alone.

At times, Jankle sounded as if he almost despised tobacco.

After a very long coffee break at three, Wendall Rohr was given his first crack at Jankle. He started with a vicious question, and matters went from bad to worse.

"Isn’t it true, Mr. Jankle, that your company spends hundreds of millions trying to convince people to smoke, yet when they get sick from your cigarettes your company won’t pay a dime to help them?"

"Is that a question?"

"Of course it is. Now answer it!"

"No. That’s not true."

"Good. When was the last time Pynex paid a penny of one of your smoker’s medical bills?"