The Justice Game (12 page)

    “I’m sorry,” the host insisted, talking over Melissa Davids. “We really are out of time.” He read a few sentences on the teleprompter as the producer counted down to the next break.

    As soon as the red light flashed off, Davids stood and took off her lapel mike. She ignored Kelly, thanked the Fox News host, and headed to the greenroom.

    Kelly tried to be gracious, mustering a fake smile as she also thanked the host and then moved off the set. She stood behind the cameras for a few minutes, watching the start of the next segment. Congressman Parker, a regular guest on the show, pontificated about the purpose of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It was, according to the congressman, legislation specifically designed to stop this sort of unmerited lawsuit.

    “Let me read what the legislation says about these kinds of civil actions,” the congressman said. “They are an abuse of the legal system, they erode the public confidence in our nation’s laws, they threaten the diminution of a basic constitutional right and civil liberty, and they constitute an unreasonable burden on interstate and foreign commerce.”

    Kelly had heard enough. She left the set and returned to the greenroom to pick up her folder. Fortunately for her, or maybe fortunately for her adversary, Melissa Davids was already gone.

On her way back to the Hilton, Kelly checked her BlackBerry. Lots of enthusiastic e-mails awaited her—friends and family gushing about seeing her on television, other attorneys at B&W telling her she did a good job. She checked her missed phone calls—thirteen in just the last few hours—and immediately dialed the one number she cared about most.

    “My friends said you were great on the morning shows,” Blake Crawford told her. “I didn’t have the heart to watch them myself.”

    “Did any of your friends catch
Fox and Friends
?”

    “A couple. They said Melissa Davids was a jerk.”

    Kelly was relieved to hear that assessment, even if it was from a totally biased perspective.

    “I think it’s safe to say she’s not going to roll over on this one.”

    “You told me that in your office.”

    “It’s a little different when you meet her in the flesh. You know those folks who run around with the bumper stickers saying, ‘You can have my gun when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands’?”

    “Yeah.”

    “I think Davids probably views them as sellouts.”

    This brought a small courtesy chuckle from Blake. In her limited contact with the man, Kelly sensed that it had probably been a long time since he had truly laughed. And who could blame him?

    “My friends say you were not exactly a pushover, either,” Blake said.

    It was the one comment Kelly needed to hear. She felt like she had been played on the Fox interview and caught off guard. But the client felt good about it. Funny thing with clients, they didn’t always care how smooth or eloquent you were; they just wanted to know you were fighting for them.

    “Thanks,” Kelly said. “I think we’re off to a good start.”

It took two discreet calls from conservative pro-gun senators, both friends of Robert Sherwood and major beneficiaries of Sherwood’s political donations, before Melissa Davids would agree to the meeting. Ultimately, she acquiesced, provided that they could squeeze it in first thing in the afternoon, before her return flight to Atlanta. Sherwood had a driver pick Davids up at the Fox News studio and drive her to his waterfront estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. Privacy was of utmost importance.

    Sherwood met her at the door himself and was struck by how much smaller she looked in person than she did on television. When they shook hands, her grip had the tensile strength of iron; when she spoke, she talked in clipped sentences with a military staccato and no trace of a Southern accent. She looked at Sherwood with the same kind of suspicious intensity one prizefighter uses to intimidate the other just before the bout.

    Robert Sherwood liked her immediately.

    “Something to drink?”

    “No, thanks.”

    “How was your trip out here?”

    “Fine.”

    Visitors normally couldn’t resist gawking at the cavernous entranceway to Sherwood’s manor or staring through the house to the bank of windows overlooking the water. The view from the front entrance was breathtaking. One could see past the plush marbles and rich woods and antique furniture of the interior, through the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the back wall, straight to the layered terrace and exquisite landscaping leading down to Long Island Sound. On a clear day, you could stand at Sherwood’s front door and see sailboats, pleasure yachts, and other vessels dotting the sound for more than a mile in each direction.

    Sherwood’s neighbors were some of the wealthiest men and women in America—not the flashy
nouveau riche,
television stars and athletes with limited earning capacity, but the old-time money with real fortunes—hedge fund operators and brokerage firm executives savvy enough to have survived the stock market meltdown of 2008. These were the men and women who made more each year than the combined payroll of the New York Knicks.

    Yet Melissa Davids, to her credit, was apparently impressed by none of this.

    “I don’t have long,” she said, hardly even glancing around. “I suggest we get down to business.”

    “All right,” Sherwood said. “But first I want to show you something.”

    He led her through the massive family room that stretched across the back of the house, past a wet bar, and through a door that opened into another large room spanning the house’s east side. It had few windows and no view of the harbor. Its design was more rustic, with a stone fireplace and a number of trophy kills hanging on the walls—African lions, Alaskan bears, Canadian elk.

    Sherwood took his guns seriously. His collection contained more than forty firearms, including four rifles and two pistols manufactured by MD Firearms.

    Melissa Davids’s lips curled into a little smile. “Your friends told me you were a collector.”

    They spent nearly a half hour in the trophy room, with Davids critiquing her competitors’ firearms and even pointing out a few flaws in her own. A dry wit came to the surface, and she allowed Sherwood to talk her into a drink.

    “Scotch? Brandy?” Sherwood asked.

    “I’m from the South,” Davids replied. “We drink whiskey and beer.”

    Over Bud Lights, they swapped hunting stories. For lunch, Sherwood served sandwiches and chips on paper plates.

    Halfway through the meal, Davids checked her watch. “Okay,” she said, “you pass the bona fide gun nut test. Now, let’s get down to business. Senator Michaels said you might be able to help with the Crawford case.”

    “I run the best jury consulting firm in the world,” Sherwood said. He put his sandwich down and launched into an explanation of the micromarketing techniques that Justice Inc. employed to predict jury verdicts.

    Davids looked skeptical. “I spend a few million bucks on lawyers every year. If you’re so good, why haven’t I heard of you?”

    Sherwood lowered his voice. This was the critical part. “We’ve spent millions perfecting the system. But to be frank, companies like yours can’t afford our services.”

    Davids didn’t flinch, but he could tell he had her attention.

    “We impanel mock juries who very closely mirror the actual juries. Other consulting firms know how to use shadow juries. But our jurors so closely track the real jurors that they’re more like clones. We hold mock trials with these jurors, working around the clock to predict the actual verdict days or even weeks before the real trial concludes. We sell our research to hedge fund operators and investment firms.”

    Davids had stopped eating and Sherwood could see the look in her eyes, the dawning realization that this might be an asset she hadn’t considered before. A different league. What could be more valuable than the ability to predict exactly which jurors might be most sympathetic to her case?

    But she was a tough negotiator who knew better than to act impressed. “And because you’re such a big fan of guns, you’re going to make an exception in this case,” Davids said, with a twinge of sarcasm. “For the meager sum of a half million or so, you’re going to tell us exactly which jurors to strike and which ones to keep.”

    Sherwood smiled. “I already told you—you can’t afford us.”

    “Then what’s your angle? Why this elaborate show?”

    Sherwood got up and grabbed another beer from the refrigerator. “I want you to win,” he said. “I like your side of the debate. Plus, if I intend to make a lot of money on the case, I can’t afford to be surprised by the verdict.”

    “Then let me put your mind at ease,” Davids said. She took another bite of her sandwich. Sherwood waited while she chewed. “We haven’t paid any plaintiffs yet. We don’t intend to start with Blake Crawford. We’ll win, Mr. Sherwood. You can put your money down right now.”

    Robert Sherwood shook his head. “We ran three mock juries on that Indiana case that was headed to trial until Congress bailed you out with the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. You would have lost nearly ten million. You haven’t paid anything yet, but only because you’ve never actually gone to trial in a case like this one.”

    Sherwood watched the lines on Davids’s face tighten, the eyes narrow. She didn’t like hearing this, but he kept his voice steady, matter-of-fact. “Your high-priced lawyers and in-house counsel have lost almost every critical hearing this past year in the cases currently pending against you. So far, courts in New York, Indiana, and the state of Washington have either held the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act unconstitutional or found other ways around it. It’s just a matter of time before you have to start facing real juries on these cases where you’re allegedly indirectly supplying the black market, and our research is not encouraging.”

    Davids finished her beer and wiped her mouth. “I’ve got enough people telling me how bad things are going,” she said, her words terse. “I’m fully aware that inner-city juries are just dying to tag a gun manufacturer like us with a huge verdict. It’s the American way, Mr. Sherwood. Everybody’s a victim. Sue the big, bad corporation. I didn’t really need to come all the way up here for the civics lesson.”

    “I’ve got a solution,” Sherwood said. She gave him a don’t-we-all? look. “Wait,” he said, “hear me out.”

    “My plane leaves in two and a half hours. It will take thirty minutes to get to the airport.”

    “All right, let me get right to it.” Sherwood said. “Virginia Beach is a good town for a test case—it’s pretty conservative and mostly Republican. But there’s not much of a gun culture there. You need a different type of lawyer to handle this case. Somebody young. Somebody who doesn’t fit the stereotype. Somebody who can relate to a Virginia Beach jury.”

    “And I suppose you have just the person?”

    “He’s the best young trial lawyer I’ve ever seen. I had to release him from our program because he was too good—skewing the results. He would win cases that most of us thought were unwinnable.”

    Sherwood could tell from the look on her face that Davids was not buying it. “I’ve already got plenty of lawyers,” she said. “And I need true believers, not somebody who, as you say, ‘goes against stereotype.’”

    “Humor me,” Sherwood said. “Just spend fifteen minutes watching this kid on tape.”

    Davids put up some initial resistance but ultimately agreed. They went to a flat-screen television hanging on the wall, where Sherwood had the highlight film ready to go—portions of an opening statement, Jason on cross-examination, a slice of Jason’s best closing argument. Sherwood provided running commentary, explaining that Davids could use her in-house lawyer to drive the overall strategy and Jason to try the case.

    “This kid is magic with a jury,” Sherwood reiterated. “You can teach him how to use guns, why they’re important. Someone like Jason who is less immersed in the gun culture will be better at explaining those concepts to the jury in a way they can understand.”

    Davids looked like she was thinking about it, so Sherwood pressed his point. “He’s licensed in Virginia, and you need someone young. Kelly Starling is young and fresh and easy on the eyes. You think that’s a coincidence? The handgun-control folks know that men typically go our way.

    “On the other hand, our preliminary research shows that young women would typically be sympathetic to a victim like Blake Crawford. Jason could help win over that demographic.”

    Davids nodded a little and seemed to relax. “I’ll think about it.” She was silent for a moment, then asked, “Why would you own a Russian SKS?” She motioned toward to one of the guns in Sherwood’s collection. “It’s a piece of junk.”

    “It was a gift,” Sherwood explained. “I haven’t fired it more than twice since I got it.”

    Davids seemed to accept this and turned the conversation to hunting. She didn’t leave until two hours later, flying south on Sherwood’s private plane. On the return trip, Sherwood’s pilot called and shared some good news.

    “She contacted her company lawyer and asked him to do a background check on Jason Noble,” the pilot said.

    When Robert Sherwood hung up the phone, he poured himself a glass of scotch and water. Before he went to bed, he stepped back into his gun room and looked around at his trophy kills hanging from the walls, the pictures of Sherwood and his hunting buddies, the guns that had brought him so much pleasure.

    Until the day his daughter died.

    Just prior to his meeting with Davids, he had thought about putting away the hunting pictures but decided against it. They added so much authenticity to the room. Besides, he hadn’t changed that much in five years. Davids apparently hadn’t noticed that there were no recent pictures.

    He turned off the light and locked the door. The details he had learned about his daughter’s violent death flashed through his mind. He would pour himself another drink before he called it a night.