A Civil Action (65 page)

Conway found Schlichtmann in the library reading the new file. A good sign, thought Conway to himself, the first interest he’s taken in another case in years.

Schlichtmann, hearing Conway behind him, turned to look at his partner. “You know Skinner could enter judgment for Grace, don’t you?”

So Schlichtmann wasn’t thinking about the new case after all. Conway said, “I think Eustis wants to hear the judge’s ruling. They’re willing to take their chances.”

Early that afternoon Schlichtmann got a call from Keating. Keating said that he also wanted the judge to hold off on his ruling until they could talk again about settling. Keating added that he’d already called the judge’s clerk to ask the judge to delay ruling for a few days. He’d have Eustis call Schlichtmann by the end of the day.

When Schlichtmann hung up the phone, he looked thoughtful. “That’s very interesting,” he told Conway. “Keating’s scared, too. He thinks he can get a better deal from me without the judge getting in the way. He sees waiting for the judge’s ruling like a roll of the dice, just as we do. Uncertainty works for both of us.”

Conway nodded. “Everything points to the middle ground.”

Schlichtmann looked pleased. A small, thoughtful smile creased his lips. “It’s just possible that I may have taken control of this again.”

“Oh, God,” groaned Conway.

“I’m not saying that’s happened. I’m just saying it
may
be.”

“If history is any guide, Eustis won’t call today,” said Conway.

“No,” said Schlichtmann, “this is a different scenario.”

The phone rang. Kathy Boyer poked her head into the office. “Somebody named Grendon.”

“Who the fuck is he?” said Schlichtmann.

“Bill collector,” muttered Gordon, who was spread flat on his back on the couch in Schlichtmann’s office.

They waited for three hours, until five o’clock, when Eustis finally called. Conway and Gordon sat in Schlichtmann’s office, listening to his side of the conversation. Schlichtmann sat at his desk, his back turned to them.

He listened to Eustis for what seemed like a long time, and then he said, “Al, let me tell you the problem I’ve got. We’re not outside the realm of the possible, but I’ve got some other concerns.… No, no, I’m not saying it’s unacceptable. My feeling is that if we sat down face-to-face and talked about it, we could resolve it to the satisfaction of both of us.”

Schlichtmann closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Conway took a deep breath.

“It’s just not possible for you to come up here?” Schlichtmann was saying to Eustis. “I don’t like to do this over the phone. Maybe we can come down.… Okay, let me call you back within the hour.”

Schlichtmann hung up the telephone and looked at Conway and Gordon. “He’s up to eight million. He said, ‘The cash register’s empty at eight million.’ ”

Conway snorted. “Accept it. It’s over.”

“Now, wait just a minute.” Schlichtmann narrowed his eyes and looked up at the ceiling, a speculative gaze. “If he’s at eight, don’t you think if I go down there I can get him to nine, nine and a quarter?”

“I don’t think so,” said Gordon. “Look, Jan, let’s not get greedy. We’ve tried to push this and we haven’t been real successful.”

“Let’s not get greedy, Jan,” repeated Conway. “It’s over.”

But Schlichtmann wasn’t convinced. “It’s a question of how much further he’s willing to go.”

“How did he sound over the phone?” asked Gordon.

Schlichtmann thought about this for a moment. “He sounded like, ‘Don’t goose me.’ ”

Gordon shook his head. “I’m not in the mood for this, Jan. Just go for the close.”

“Part of the deal is that the judge vacates the verdict and orders a new trial,” said Schlichtmann. “The families are going to have a problem with that.”

“No, they won’t,” said Conway. “How does a million dollars a family look in the press? Does it look like we won this case? I think it does.” Conway punched out his cigarette in the ashtray and turned to look at Schlichtmann. “Close it, Jan. Close it,” he said slowly, firmly. He hiked up his pants and walked out of the office.

“It’s actually about four hundred and fifty thousand per family, after expenses and fees,” said Gordon.

“Half a million per family,” murmured Schlichtmann.

“Net, no taxes,” added Gordon.

Conway reappeared at the door. “Now, Jan. Do it now.”

“Yeah,” sighed Schlichtmann at last. “If I go down to New York, he’ll just make me grovel.”

Gordon laughed—a light, airy laugh. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about groveling. We’ve already groveled plenty. Let’s do something new in life.”

It had been five weeks since the verdict. During that time, when he feared the worst, Schlichtmann had often spoken of death, as if for him losing the case was tantamount to dying. By his lights, this settlement
was
a loss. But it wasn’t the end of the case, he thought at that moment. He would appeal the verdict for Beatrice, and maybe he’d win a new trial against Facher. The Woburn case wasn’t really over. He didn’t have to die yet.

He wanted to be alone when he made the call to Eustis. Gordon left his office and walked out to the kitchen, where Conway was talking with Peggy. Conway told her that it was over, that they had settled with Grace.

Peggy reacted with joy, clasping her hands in delight and shouting, “Good! I won’t have to wash dishes here every night.”

Conway fumbled with the coffee pot, and then he set it down suddenly. “It’s been five long years,” he said in a hoarse voice, and tears came to his eyes.

Peggy came over to him and put her arms around him. They stood for a moment in the embrace. “In the next few minutes, it’ll be all over,” she said.

Schlichtmann emerged from his office and came toward the kitchen. “He’ll give me eight. He won’t give me any more than that. He says it’s extortion.”

Gordon was tapping out figures on the calculator. Schlichtmann peered over Gordon’s shoulder for a moment. “All I want are my suits from Dmitri, my condo, and a trip to Hawaii,” said Schlichtmann. “And forty thousand in cash. No, keep the cash and get me a credit card for Hawaii. A platinum credit card.”

“No,” said Gordon.

“I must have my dignity,” said Schlichtmann.

“What’s wrong with a fucking Mastercard?” said Gordon. “What do you estimate your bill on the platinum will be after one month in Hawaii?”

“Just put me back to where I was two years ago,” said Schlichtmann. “Make me whole again.”

“How do you plan on paying the credit cards when they come due?”

“I’ll be settling cases again,” said Schlichtmann.

Blindman’s Buff

1

Judge Skinner gave his blessing to the eight-million-dollar settlement on Monday morning, September 22. The Woburn jurors, summoned that morning by the judge’s clerk, waited upstairs in the jury room, expecting to begin the second phase of the trial.

In his chambers the judge said to Schlichtmann, “We’re talking about many hundreds of thousands of dollars for each one of these families?”

“Yes,” replied Schlichtmann.

“I think this is quite a successful settlement,” said the judge, “certainly from the plaintiffs’ point of view. There was a good likelihood they would have ended up with nothing at all, given the extremely difficult nature of the evidence.”

Schlichtmann made no reply.

The last two weeks had been difficult for Schlichtmann. Keating had made many demands on behalf of Grace. There would be no deal, Keating had said, unless the judge granted Grace’s motion for a new trial and rendered the verdict null. Furthermore, it had to appear as if the settlement had come about only after the judge declared a new
trial. This petty deception irked Schlichtmann, but he went along with it. He had little choice. He suspected the judge was going to order a new trial for Grace anyway. He became certain of that when the judge readily adopted Keating’s fictitious chronology.

“There never was going to be a second phase,” Schlichtmann told Conway bitterly. “The judge was going to fuck us all along. We got the money an hour before everything turned to dust.”

The case against W. R. Grace officially ended as it had begun—in front of a crowd in Judge Skinner’s courtroom. The judge informed the jurors of the settlement and thanked them for their service. A moment later reporters surrounded Schlichtmann and Keating, seeking details of the settlement. Keating had insisted, as another condition of settlement, that the amount paid by Grace be kept secret, and Schlichtmann had consented to this. But many people, including of course the families themselves, knew the sum, and by evening the network news programs would be citing a “reported” eight-million-dollar settlement.

Out in Woburn that afternoon, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Schlichtmann proclaimed victory in front of the television cameras and a crowd of onlookers. His clients, seated on folding chairs in a semicircle before the cameras, made similar statements. Several expressed their conviction that, in Donna Robbins’s words, they had “set out to teach corporate America a lesson,” and they had succeeded.

Not everyone at Trinity Episcopal believed that, not even some of those most favorably disposed to the families’ cause. From the back of the church hall, Reverend Bruce Young watched the proceedings and said bitterly, “I’ll bet they’re having a wonderful party at Grace headquarters today.” He’d been furious—“bullshit mad,” as he later put it—when he heard that morning about the settlement. He felt he’d invested a lot of himself in this matter, and to him taking Grace’s money without a full disclosure by the company, or any expressions of atonement, cheapened everything. The way he saw it, the case had started out as a matter of principle. He recalled Anne Anderson saying once that she wasn’t after money, that what she wanted was for J. Peter Grace to come to her front door and apologize. As far as Reverend Young was concerned, Schlichtmann had botched the first part of the trial—the easy part—and then he’d sold out when things began to look risky. Even worse, thought Young, was the way Schlichtmann was now using his lawyerly powers of persuasion to convince the families that they’d actually won something.
The entire affair disgusted the minister. “This was a case I thought would have some real importance,” he said. “It never happened.”

Among the families themselves, there was trouble. Schlichtmann always said that once money was put on the table, things would turn ugly. And now the ugliness began, although not in ways he had anticipated. A few days after the press conference at Trinity Episcopal, the families met in Schlichtmann’s office to discuss the division of money. Schlichtmann informed them that each family would receive $375,000 in cash and, five years later, another payment of $80,000. The case expenses amounted to $2.6 million. And the legal fees came to $2.2 million. This, Schlichtmann pointed out to the families, was only 28 percent of the total settlement, less than the 40 percent fee they’d agreed to when they’d signed the contingency forms.

No one voiced any complaint at that meeting. But afterward, as Donna and Anne drove home to Woburn together, Anne expressed anger at the size of Schlichtmann’s fee. She didn’t think the lawyers should get more than any one family.

Donna said, “I think Jan deserves it. He did all the work. All we had to do was go to meetings.”

“He hasn’t lost a child,” replied Anne.

“I hope he never has to go through that,” said Donna.

Anne didn’t say any more that night, but the matter did not end there. In recent months Anne had begun to resent Schlichtmann. She found his manner with the families patronizing, as if he were talking to a group of children. There would have been no case had it not been for her efforts, and yet she felt as if he had systematically excluded her and the others from important decisions. Whenever she ventured an opinion that differed from his, he would always say, “Trust me, trust me.” How many times had she heard him say that? It galled Anne, but what bothered her most was a growing conviction, now that the trial was over, that he didn’t really care at all about her or the others. She came to believe that he’d been using them simply as a vehicle for his own ambition, for his own fame and fortune. “I was doing this for my baby, for Jimmy,” she explained later. “It started out in a pure manner. We didn’t want what happened to us to happen to anyone else. But by the time I got through dealing with Jan, I felt violated. The lawsuit made me feel dirty.”

She insisted that she didn’t really care about the money. But Schlichtmann, she believed, cared a lot about it. And if money was
important to him, she decided that she would make it important to her. She found a receptive audience with the Zona family, whom she’d known for fifteen years now.

Anne and the Zonas could not challenge Schlichtmann on the matter of his fee since they had signed a contract entitling him to 40 percent of the recovery. But they could dispute some of the $2.6 million that Schlichtmann had claimed in expenses. When they raised this issue, Schlichtmann suggested they hire an accountant to go through the thousands of invoices. They took him up on the invitation. The accountant questioned copying fees, interest charges, overtime expenses, and sundry other matters. Anne and the Zonas hired a lawyer to represent them. Ronald Zona called Donna Robbins one night to enlist her support. He told Donna that Schlichtmann had stolen half a million dollars from them.