The Cost of Happiness: A Contemporary Romance (6 page)

Four months forgetting her little moot court crush on him—all that progress gone. Four months reminding herself that he was probably one of those guys who likes women, all women, and whose attentions are easily misconstrued. Four months telling herself that he would be married, involved, dating, unavailable…and even if he wasn’t any of those things, he was out of her league.

Look at him. Not Blackjack McIntyre handsome, maybe, but really good-looking. And not so old. She was twenty-seven. He had to be less than ten years older. But completely out of reach for a girl who only left Iowa two years ago. Especially now that he was her boss.

Meghan paced her living room as she tried to banish the image of Dan Howard laughing at her umbrella and instead remember him from that morning’s meeting. He hadn’t humiliated her, certainly not intentionally, but it still stung knowing that either she told him why she’d left school, or she let the gossip mill handle it.

She stopped pacing and looked out her window at the little park between Spruce House and the school parking lot. Another thing to be grateful for. Her apartment was shaded by the huge sycamores on 43rd Street.

Be thankful for what you have. Don’t wish for the moon.

Meghan could hear her grandfather’s voice, steady and resolute in the face of his daughter’s craziness. Pops had kept Meghan focused on what needed to be done.

I won’t let you down, Pops
.

Meghan had been at her desk for just a few minutes when Dan appeared at her door, a paper cup of coffee in his hand.

He’s just my boss
.

She couldn’t help noticing how different he was from Georgia, who probably couldn’t have found Meghan’s office with a map and a trail of breadcrumbs. Georgia would have gotten her secretary to phone Meghan with the message that she needed to go to Georgia’s office. Dan had walked the sixty feet all on his own. Clearly not yet in sync with law firm ways.

“Have you heard anything about Davis versus Argus Industries?” he asked.

“I heard we haven’t been retained.” Actually, what Meghan heard was that Georgia hadn’t even contacted the client before she left.

“Have you had a chance to look at the complaint?”

She had, but no one had asked her to. Thinking about possible defenses was the sort of legal analysis that Meghan knew could get her into trouble with the “real” lawyers in Litigation. “I’ve seen it,” she said cautiously.

Dan took a sip of his coffee, his blue eyes trained on her face the whole time. Finally he said, “Let’s get something straight. Maybe no one else here knows who you are and what you’re capable of, but I do.”

What could she say? “Okay.”

“So if I ask you if you’ve read a complaint, I’m inviting you to tell me what you think. Nothing you say will be held against you unless you say something stupid. And I don’t think you say stupid stuff very often.”

“Thank you.” She glanced at him. He wasn’t smiling. “I think.”

“Good. Now, about the case.” He grabbed one of Meghan’s lined pads and flipped pages over until he got to a blank sheet.

She thought back to the case. “Davis is potentially huge. The plaintiffs allege that for ten years cell phone manufacturers conspired with service providers to pad customers’ bills by a penny or so on certain text messages. The court hasn’t approved it as a class action yet, but if it does we’re talking tens of millions of cell phone users. There are six defendants, all manufacturers of cell phones. Our client would be ProCell, which has the third largest share of the market. We already handle their patent work, but they’ve tended to go with Boston firms for litigation.”

“Would be?”

“I don’t believe Fergusson competed in the beauty contest.” She waited to see if Dan knew the term for the competition by law firms to get a client to retain them. He didn’t ask, so presumably he knew.

“Let me guess. Georgia didn’t want to bother while she had one foot in Washington.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Meghan said, keeping her gaze on her folded hands. “But I checked the court docket this morning. No one’s yet entered an appearance on ProCell’s behalf.”

“Fair enough. Go on.”

“Okay. The plaintiffs claim an odd combination of hardware and software problems resulted in increased charges for text messaging. If they won on every count, the damages could be massive.”

“Ah, but we think ProCell has some defenses, don’t we?” He smiled at her.

She couldn’t help it—she beamed back at him. “Right. That’s what makes it such a great case. In order for the plaintiffs to prevail, they need to show that our phones had both the hardware and software problems and that the problems worked together in a particular way to result in the erroneous charges. If ProCell phones didn’t have the same problems as the other manufacturers, they’d have a defense. That could be hard for them to claim because of the intellectual property and antitrust issues.”

“Right,” he nodded. “How would ProCell know if Argus and the others had the same design flaws unless they were either infringing each other’s patents or colluding?”

“Well, there could have been licensing deals all around so that everyone shared each other’s technology,” Meghan pointed out. “Some of that happens with cell phone manufacturers and cell phone providers, otherwise you wouldn’t know whether your phone would work with your preferred provider. But this case arises from fourth-generation technology, which was pretty basic back in the day. The six firms were all competing for market share, so in theory there shouldn’t be any antitrust implications. Plus, the Federal Trade Commission gave all six defendants a clean bill of health. It was the Federal Communications Commission that fined the companies, based on some shaky conclusions about billing irregularities.”

Dan nodded. “Okay, so it was cheaper to pay the FCC’s fines than argue with the federal government. Then some big-time plaintiff’s lawyer gets all the FCC and FTC’s reports. After doing no original work of its own, the law firm files the class action lawsuit, piggy-backing on the government’s investigation to allege consumer fraud. What annoys me is how screwed up the economics of these cases are—our client has already paid the fine, which should be punishment enough, but now has to defend against the class action lawsuit. Even if the plaintiffs win, each individual cell phone owner gets a dollar or so, while the plaintiffs’ lawyers get huge windfalls from next-to-no effort. The defendants all have to charge a bit more to pay for the cost of litigation, which means the consumers have to hand back the buck fifty they got the year before. Who really benefits from this—other than the plaintiffs’ attorneys?”

Meghan laughed. “So why aren’t you a plaintiffs’ lawyer?”

Dan’s expression sobered. “Because I don’t want to make money that way.”

“Instead, you want to defend the wrongdoers?” She liked teasing him.

“What I’d really like is for the money to go to the federal agencies that do all the heavy lifting in these cases. Then they could pay their staff attorneys real salaries. That would be a job I’d take.”

“But not at the paltry salaries they currently offer.” Meghan pursed her lips. “The glory of nailing the bastards isn’t compensation enough, I guess.”

Dan held up his hands. “Okay, you got me. After six years with Justice, I like what the private sector is willing to pay me if I become an equity partner. Still, I told Wallace Leith I wouldn’t have made the move if it hadn’t been for the opportunity to work on this sort of case. I consider the plaintiffs’ bar to be only a couple of steps above white-collar criminals. Beating them will feel really good.” He winked at her.

“And that blind item at Philly Law Life dot com about you getting tired waiting for Blackjack McIntyre to quit—that wouldn’t have anything to do with your decision to leave the public sector?” Meghan made her eyes go round mentioning this scurrilous gossip. That website was funny but who knew if any of it was true.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.” He smiled. “But I don’t think you’re stupid to quote them.”

The rush of pleasure warmed her from her chest to the roots of her hair. She suspected she was blushing.

“Oh, Dan. Here you are,” Vicky’s bony hip leaned against the door. “I have a quick question if you’ve got a moment.”

After flicking a glance over his shoulder, Dan rolled his eyes at Meghan. She grabbed the notepad out of his hands.

“I’ll type these notes up and get them to you, shall I?”

“That would be great, thanks.” He headed for the door. “Okay, Vicky, what’s your question?”

They were gone before Meghan heard the answer.

She looked at Dan’s notes.

Meghan—Develop a defense strategy that gets us this client
today
.

That’s all he’d written. She shook her head. He clearly didn’t know that she wasn’t supposed to be doing work like that. Work that a lawyer—one like Vicky, for example—was expected to do.

She couldn’t stop smiling, though, as she opened a document and started to make notes.

Dan got rid of Vicky pretty quickly, then sat back in his new corner office. Amazing they gave him Georgia’s office, seeing how she’d been a pretty senior partner. Located in the southeast corner of the building, it probably wasn’t much in demand. No view of the parkway, art museum, or Logan Circle. Instead, he had William Penn on top of City Hall in one direction and the other glass-and-chrome skyscrapers in the other. Compared to his office at Justice, even a crappy view from the thirty-ninth floor was pretty cool.

He placed a call to Lou Trioli, in-house counsel at ProCell. After he’d introduced himself, he apologized.

“I only got the complaint in the Davis case yesterday. Georgia Moran was in a rush leaving for the senator’s office… Well, of course that’s no excuse but I gather he was quite demanding even before she left.”

“Hey, I understand,” Trioli said.

“Have you guys appointed counsel yet in this case?”

Trioli didn’t respond for a while, leaving Dan holding his breath, praying they hadn’t. He wanted this case, bad.

“We’ve finished our beauty contest,” Trioli admitted. “We haven’t made a decision yet. I just think it’s a bit late to look at another firm.” He sounded sorry to turn Dan away.

“Let me ask you this, Lou. Did any of the other firms tell you they could maybe get you out of the case even before the court certifies the class action?”

That caught Trioli’s interest. “Hell, no.”

“I’ve got someone on my staff looking into it. We think there may be a way to get the case against ProCell severed from the other defendants.”

“Holy shit.”

Dan grinned. “No promises, but here’s what I’m asking. Let me and my person call you this afternoon with a strategy. If you like what we’ve got for you, let us come to Massachusetts and pitch our firm to you.”

“You’re new at Fergusson, aren’t you?”

“I started yesterday.”

Trioli laughed. “Not wasting any time, hunh?”

“If I told you how much I wanted your business, you’d think I was inflating our strategy but that’s not it. I think I found a gem on the staff here and I fully plan to exploit her brilliance to ProCell’s benefit.”

“Junior associate?”

“Better—well, cheaper certainly. Meghan’s a paralegal. Two months ago, she was the top student at Franklin Law but a family crisis required her to take a leave from law school, so Fergusson snapped her up.” Stretching the truth a little, but hey, all’s fair in a situation like this. “I met her when I judged a moot court competition in the spring. Trust me, Lou—she’s the brightest legal mind I’ve found in years. And I used to work with Blackjack McIntyre.”

“Wait, that guy who put away some Tony Soprano wiseguy named T-Rex?”

Dan smiled. “The very same. As good as Blackjack is, I’m still impressed with Meghan. So, do you have time for us this afternoon?”

“Hell, yes. If only so I can hear for myself this paragon you’re touting.”

Hanging up the phone, Dan swung his chair back and forth. Seeing Meghan at the meeting yesterday was like finding a rare coin in your change at the end of the day—evidently no one else had seen her value. He wished he could tell his colleagues what they had under their noses, but better to wait until they’d landed ProCell as a client.