The Associate (5 page)

Every eye in the room focused on Daniel, but he did not notice because he was reading Plaintiff’s Exhibit 234, which appeared to be a cover letter for a report that Dr. Sergey Kaidanov had sent to George Fournet, the in-house counsel for Geller Pharmaceuticals.

Dear Mr. Fournet,
I have great concerns about thalglitazone (trade name, Insufort) based on the results emerging from our congenital anomaly study in pregnant primates. We have to date studied the effects of an oral dose of one hundred micrograms per kilogram, given for ten days beginning on the thirtieth day of conception, on the fetus in forty pregnant rhesus monkeys. The early results are striking—eighteen of the forty neonate primates (45 percent) were born with maxillofacial abnormalities, in some cases severe, the most severe being complete cleft lip and palate. It is unclear to me how this could have been missed in the rodent studies, but as we all know this does happen from time to time.
The purpose of this letter and the enclosed preliminary results is to alert you to my findings, as I believe it will have important implications for our current phase II and III studies in human beings. I will forward a detailed anatomical and biochemical analysis when my study is completed.

Daniel was stunned. Kaidanov’s letter was the smoking gun that could destroy Geller Pharmaceuticals’ case, and Aaron Flynn had just told Arthur Briggs that Daniel had placed the lethal weapon in his hands.

While Daniel read the letter in shocked silence, Susan Webster’s fingers flew across the keys of her laptop.

“I have a few questions about this document, Dr. Schroeder,” Aaron Flynn said in a cordial tone.

Susan slipped beside Arthur Briggs and gestured at a case she had called up on her computer. She whispered hurriedly in his ear and Briggs shouted, “Objection! This is a confidential communication between Dr. Kaidanov and his attorney that has been inadvertently turned over to you. You had an ethical obligation to refrain from reading the letter once you saw that it was an attorney/client communication.”

Flynn chuckled. “Arthur, this is a report of the results of a preclincal test on rhesus monkeys. Your client, probably at your suggestion, has been instructing its scientists to send all their test results to in-house counsel, so you can raise this silly objection to our discovery requests, but it’s too transparent to take seriously.”

“You’ll take this damn seriously when I report you to the bar disciplinary committee.”

Flynn smiled. “Take any steps you think you must, Arthur.”

Flynn nodded and one of his associates sped several copies of a legal document across the polished wood table.

“I want the record to reflect that I have just served Dr. Schroeder and his counsel a request for production of Dr. Kaidanov’s study and all supporting documentation, as well as a notice of deposition for Dr. Kaidanov and Mr. Fournet.”

Flynn turned back to the witness. “Now, Dr. Schroeder, I’d like to ask you a few questions about the Kaidanov study.”

“Don’t you say a thing,” Briggs shouted at the witness.

“Arthur, Dr. Schroeder is under oath and we’re in the middle of his deposition.”

Flynn’s tone was calm and condescending, and it raised Briggs’s blood pressure another notch.

“I want Judge Norris on the phone.” A blood vessel in Briggs’s temple looked like it was about to burst. “I want a ruling on this before I’ll let Dr. Schroeder give you the time of day.”

Flynn shrugged. “Call the judge.”

Daniel barely heard what Briggs and Flynn said. All he could think about was the steps he’d taken when he reviewed the discovery. How could he have missed Kaidanov’s letter? He had skim-read many of the documents, but he was specifically looking for privileged information. A letter to an attorney would have raised a red flag. It didn’t seem possible that it could slip by, but it had. Daniel was devastated. No one was perfect, but to be responsible for an error of these proportions . . .

As soon as Judge Norris was connected to the conference room, Flynn and Briggs took turns explaining the legal arguments supporting their position in the Kaidanov matter. The judge was too busy to deal with a matter of this complexity over the phone. He told the attorneys to stop questioning Schroeder until he ruled and he ordered Briggs and Flynn to submit briefs on their positions by the end of the week.

As soon as Flynn and his minions cleared the conference room, Briggs waved Kaidanov’s letter in Schroeder’s face.

“What is this, Kurt?”

“I’ve got no idea, Arthur.” The Geller executive looked as upset as his attorney. “I’ve never seen the damn thing in my life.”

“But you know this guy Kaidanov?”

“I know who he is. He works in R and D. I don’t know him personally.”

“And he’s working with these monkeys?”

“No. Not to my knowledge.”

“What does ‘not to my knowledge’ mean? You’re not holding out on me, are you? This letter could cost your company millions, if you’re lucky, and it could sink Geller if you’re not.”

Schroeder was sweating. “I swear, Arthur, I’ve never heard of a single study that we’ve conducted that came back with results like these. What kind of company do you think we run? If I got wind of a study of Insufort with those results, do you think I’d okay human trials?”

“I want to speak to Kaidanov and Fournet immediately, this afternoon,” Briggs said.

“I’ll phone my office and set it up.”

When Schroeder walked over to the credenza and punched in the number of his office, Briggs turned toward Daniel, who had tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Briggs held out his copy of the Kaidanov letter, which had sustained serious damage.

“Explain this, Ames,” he demanded in a soft tone that was more frightening than the screams he’d expected.

“I . . . uh, Mr. Briggs . . . I’ve never seen it.”

“Never seen it,” Briggs repeated. “Was Flynn lying when he said that you gave it to him?”

Daniel glanced at Susan. She averted her eyes, but her body language revealed her anxiety. Daniel looked back at Briggs.

“Well?” Briggs asked, his voice slightly louder.

“He didn’t mean that literally, Mr. Briggs. I was told to review five large boxes of documents that Geller produced in response to a demand for discovery.” Daniel was the only one who saw Susan release her pent-up breath. “I was told to deliver the discovery first thing in the morning, eight A.M. I didn’t see the boxes until eight the night before. There were roughly twenty thousand pages. I stayed at the office all evening. I even slept here. There were too many pages for me to review every one of them in that time.”

“And that’s your excuse?”

“It’s not an excuse. Nobody could have gone through every page in those boxes in the time I had.”

“You’re not a ‘nobody,’ Ames. You’re a Reed, Briggs associate. If we wanted nobodies we’d pay minimum wage and hire graduates of unaccredited, correspondence law schools.”

“Mr. Briggs. I’m sorry, but—”

“My secretary will set up the meetings,” Schroeder said as he hung up the phone. To Daniel’s great relief, Schroeder’s statement distracted Briggs.

Schroeder reread Kaidanov’s letter. When he was done he held it up. He looked grim.

“I think this is a fraud. We never conducted a study with these results,” he declared emphatically. “I’m certain of it.”

“You’d better be right,” Briggs said. “If Judge Norris rules that this letter is admissible in court, and we can’t prove it’s a fake, you, and everyone else at Geller Pharmaceuticals, will be selling pencils on street corners.”

Briggs started to lead Newbauer and Schroeder out of the room. Daniel hung back, hoping to escape Briggs’s notice, but the senior partner stopped at the door and cast a scathing look at him.

“I’ll talk with you, later,” Briggs said.

The door closed and Daniel was left alone in the conference room.

Daniel spent the afternoon waiting for the ax to fall. Around two, he dialed Susan’s extension to find out what was going on, but her secretary told him that she was at Geller Pharmaceuticals with Arthur Briggs. An hour later, when he realized that he’d never get any work done, Daniel went home to his one-bedroom walk-up on the third floor of an old brick apartment house in northwest Portland. His place was small and sparsely furnished with things Daniel had transported from his law-school apartment in Eugene. Its most attractive feature was its location near Northwest Twenty-first and Twenty-third streets with their restaurants, shops, and crowds. But today the apartment could have been in the heart of Paris and Daniel would not have noticed. Arthur Briggs was going to fire him. He was sure of it. Everything he had worked for was going to be destroyed because of a single sheet of paper.

Something else troubled Daniel. He had been so worried about being fired that it was not until he was in bed, eyes closed, that the true importance of Dr. Sergey Kaidanov’s letter dawned on him. Until he read the letter, Daniel had been convinced that there was no merit to the lawsuit Aaron Flynn had brought on behalf of Toby Moffitt, Patrick Cummings, and the other children allegedly affected by Insufort. What if he was wrong? What if Geller Pharmaceuticals knew that it was selling a product that could deform innocent babies? Daniel was part of a team representing Geller. If the company was knowingly responsible for the horror that had been visited upon Patrick Cummings and Daniel continued to defend Geller, he would be aiding and abetting a terrible enterprise.

Daniel tossed and turned all night and was exhausted when his alarm went off. By the time he arrived at Reed, Briggs the next morning, he was certain that everyone in the firm knew about his blunder. Daniel managed to get from the elevator to his office without meeting anyone, but he was barely settled behind his desk when Joe Molinari walked in and his day started to go downhill.

“What the fuck did you do?” Molinari asked in a hushed voice as soon as he shut the door.

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked nervously.

“The word is that Briggs has a hair up his ass the size of a redwood and you put it there.”

“Shit.”

“So it’s true.”

Daniel felt utterly defeated.

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Look, compadre, I’m here for you.”

“I appreciate the support. I’d just rather be alone now.”

“Okay,” Molinari said reluctantly. He stood up. “Just remember what I said. If there’s something I can do, ask.”

Molinari left. Daniel felt exhausted and the day had just started. It suddenly dawned on him that he had never gotten around to discussing with Susan her role in the discovery fiasco. If Susan went to Briggs and told him that she was partly to blame, it might help, and from what Molinari said, he could use all the help he could get. Daniel walked down the hall to Susan’s office. She was wearing a cream-colored blouse and a gray pantsuit and looked as fresh and untroubled as a woman who had slept for twenty-four hours.

“Susan?”

“Oh, hi,” she answered with a smile.

“Got a minute?”

Daniel started toward a chair.

“Actually, I don’t.” Daniel stopped in his tracks. “Arthur needs this yesterday.”

“We really have to talk.”

“Now is not a good time,” she said firmly. Her smile was starting to look a little strained.

“I was hoping that you’d tell Arthur that you were supposed to review the discovery and that I helped you out.”

Susan looked surprised, as if the idea had never occurred to her.

“Why would I do that?”

“So he’d know how big the job was and that I didn’t get started until the last minute,” Daniel answered, trying to rein in his temper.

“Even if I was supposed to review the discovery, you’re the one who did,” Susan answered defensively. “If I tell Arthur, it won’t help. All that will accomplish is getting me in trouble, too.”

“If Briggs knew that we were both to blame it would take some of the pressure off of me.”

Susan looked nervous. “
I
didn’t go through the discovery.
You’re
the one who missed that letter.”

“You’d have missed it, too. Briggs would have missed it.”

“You’re right,” Susan agreed quickly. “Look, you’ll be okay. Arthur gets angry easily, but he’ll be distracted by this mess and forget you delivered the letter.”

“Fat chance.”

“Or he’ll see that you’re right. That the letter was a needle in a haystack that no one could have found unless they were incredibly lucky. You don’t have to worry.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t have to worry,” Daniel said with a trace of bitterness. “He’d never fire you.”

Susan looked very uncomfortable. “I really do have to finish this assignment. It’s research on the admissibility of Kaidanov’s letter. Can we talk about this later?”

“When, after I’m unemployed?” Daniel shot back.

“I mean it, Daniel. I’ll buzz you as soon as I get some free time.”

Daniel could not concentrate on the pleading he was drafting because his thoughts kept drifting to the Insufort case. He could not believe that Geller Pharmaceuticals would intentionally sell a product that produced the horrible results he’d seen in Aaron Flynn’s office. He had met many of the Geller executives. They weren’t monsters. The results that Sergey Kaidanov wrote about had to be an anomaly.

Daniel set aside the pleading and opened a large folder that held all of the Insufort studies. He started with the earliest and worked his way through them looking for anything that would help. By the time he had finished his review it was almost one. Daniel suddenly remembered Susan’s promise to call him when she was through with her work. He dialed Susan’s extension and her secretary told him that she had left for the day. Daniel wasn’t surprised. Deep down he knew that Susan was not going to help him. If he wanted to stay at Reed, Briggs, he was going to have to save himself, but how?

Suddenly he laughed. The answer was obvious. Sergey Kaidanov wrote the report that was about to torpedo Geller’s defense. Kaidanov’s study had to be flawed. If he could find out why Kaidanov had erred he would save the litigation and, maybe, his job.