Impact (25 page)

Hawthorne became paternal. “Building an aircraft involves some two thousand subcontractors, three thousand engineers, and over a decade of planning, construction, and testing. After it's built, the FAA has the responsibility of certifying the new plane as airworthy. But because the FAA has a limited budget—and given its responsibilities, the budget is more limited every year—it doesn't have enough inspectors to certify new planes, let alone inspect the ones already in the air, so the way they certify airworthiness is to have the manufacturers inspect their planes themselves. That sounds like a gigantic conflict of interest, and that's exactly what it is. But that's the system we're stuck with.”

Brenda cursed. “Why don't people
know
all this? Why doesn't someone do something
about
it?”

Hawthorne shrugged. “Pressure from airlines and manufacturers and private pilots to keep down expenses, pressure from cities that can't afford to improve their airports, pressure from citizens who buy the nonsense that the government doesn't do anything worthwhile with their tax money.” Hawthorne looked at Brenda. “One recent development might interest you.”

“What?”

“An Aviation Trust Fund was established back in 1970, to promote aviation safety. It's financed by a tax on plane tickets. Right now that fund has a surplus of close to six
billion
dollars—billions that could be spent on safety but aren't.”

“Why the hell not?”

“The Reagan administration is keeping the money to offset the budget deficit.”

“You have to be kidding.”

Hawthorne only grinned.

Brenda seemed close to ignition. “You mean my sister might have died because some politicians are trying to cover their asses?”

“Maybe.”

“You know what the bastards did?” Brenda continued angrily.

“What?”

“They buried Carol without her head.”

Hawthorne accepted the non sequitur with equanimity. “It's too bad, but if you've ever seen the wreckage of a commercial airliner, you know how—”

“People have been asking questions about me,” Laura interrupted suddenly, as though to perpetuate the tide of outrage. “About me and my husband. All over town. About our marriage, about Jack's business, everything. Who's
doing
it, anyway?”

All eyes flew toward Hawthorne. “It's an investigator hired by Hawley Chambers, the attorney for Federal Airline Underwriters.”

“But why?”

“To find evidence to use against you if the case gets to court. To smear you and your husband in any way they can.”

“But the airline people were so
nice.”

“The airlines usually
are
nice. And genuinely concerned. Then they turn over the defense of the crash litigation to their insurance carrier. The carrier wants to poison the well—if the victim is a single man, they'll try to show he's gay; if it's a single woman, they'll try to show she's a lesbian or a whore; if it's a married person, they'll try to show the marriage was on the rocks and both spouses were practicing adulterers. All this to convince you to give up the fight or keep a jury from awarding a fair amount in damages.”

Tollison locked his eyes in place and prayed that Laura would as well.

“They better not try to show
Carol
was a whore,” Brenda spat.

Hawthorne looked at each of them. “What I said about your own lives is true of the victims', too. If they have skeletons in their closets, you can be sure the investigator will dig them out.”

“But can't you
do
something?” Laura asked. “It's bad enough that Jack's … the way he is. Now they get to smear his name?”

“They take a life, then try to show it wasn't worth living. Is that it?” Brenda's tone was vicious and put her in league with Laura.

“The only thing I can do is try to keep the dirt from being admitted in evidence if the case goes to trial,” Hawthorne explained. “Sometimes I can, and sometimes I can't. The law's not clear enough to force the judges to keep it out under all circumstances.”

“But—”

Hawthorne held up his hand. “Let's worry about that when the time comes. Of course if they start harassing you, hanging around your house, tapping your phone, searching the place, telling your employer there's some deep dark secret in your past, then I can get a restraining order.”

“Bastards,” Brenda muttered.

Hawthorne leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “As I said, commercial aviation has problems. As we go along, you're going to learn even more about them. But it's not all bad. Air travel is by far the safest form of transportation. True, in this case the system broke down—the Hastings may not have been fit to fly, the controllers may have screwed up, the pilot may have ignored his radar or violated emergency procedures—and it may take years of litigation to find out what the problem was unless the NTSB comes up with something more than they have already. What I'm telling you is, at this point we don't
know
what the hell happened up there.”

Hawthorne paused, then looked at them with the rosy aplomb of an evangelist. “What I'm also telling you is, if things go the way I hope they do, it won't
matter
why flight 617 went down. It won't matter at all.”

APPLICATION FOR APPOINTMENT OF ALEC HAWTHORNE,

ESQ., AS CHAIR OR CO-CHAIR OF THE PLAINTIFFS'

COMMITTEE

Alec Hawthorne, Esq., respectfully requests appointment as Chairman of the Plaintiffs' Committee charged with conducting pretrial procedures in the SurfAir litigation.

1. I am the senior partner in the Law Offices of Alec Hawthorne, attorneys for the families of twelve passengers killed in this catastrophe. I commit myself to personally and diligently perform the responsibilities assigned by this Court.

2. I have been an active attorney for twenty-three years, specializing in aviation litigation for most of that time.

3. I have served as lead counsel, liaison counsel, or a member of plaintiffs' committees in the following crash cases:

•
In re Air Crash Disaster at Florida Everglades,
360 F.Supp. 1394(1973);

•
In re Turkish Airlines DC-10 Air Disaster, Paris, France,
376 F.Supp. 887 (1974);

•
In re Pago Pago Air Disaster,
394 F.Supp. 799 (1975);

•
In re Air Crash Disaster at Tenerife, Canary Islands,
435 F.Supp. 927 (1977);

•
In re Chicago DC-10 Air Crash Disaster,
476 F.Supp. 445 (1979);

•
In re Disaster at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,
540 F.Supp. 1141 (1981);

•
In re Air Florida B-737 Air Crash Disaster at Washington, D.C.,
533 F.Supp. 1350 (1982);

•
In re Air Crash Disaster Wear New Orleans,
548 F.Supp. 1268 (1982).

4. I have been retained as counsel, both in this country and abroad, in over one hundred cases arising from air-crash disasters that were not the subject of Multi-District Litigation jurisdiction.

5. I have held leadership positions in and have participated in the work of numerous bar associations. The positions I have held include:

— president, San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association;

— chairman, Aviation Law Section and Member of the Board of Governors, Association of Trial Lawyers of America;

— chairman, Aviation Law Committee and Member of the Board of Directors, California Trial Lawyers Association;

— member of California Bar Association Society of Medical Jurisprudence and American Bar Association Litigation Section and Insurance, Negligence and Compensation Section;

6. I am co-author of a treatise,
Air Law and Litigation Tactics
, used in many law schools and continuing legal education programs around the country. I am also Adjunct Professor of Trial Advocacy at the Hastings College of Law.

7. I am a member in good standing of the Bars of the United States Supreme Court and of the states of California and Nevada; the United States Courts of Appeal for the Second, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, and District of Columbia Circuits; and the United States District Courts of the Northern, Central, and Southern Districts of California, the Southern District of New York, and the District of Columbia District. I have been specially admitted to practice in particular aviation actions in many other District Courts, including those in Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Florida.

WHEREFORE
, I respectfully request appointment by this Court as Chair or Co-Chair of the Plaintiffs' Committee in the SurfAir Crash litigation.

DATED: October 9, 1987

Alec Hawthorne, Esq.

Petitioner

EIGHT

Although proceedings have yet to begin, the courtroom swells with swagger. Battles for supremacy rage in every corner of the only room in the building large enough to accommodate both the lawyers and their egos, which is the ceremonial chamber where judges are sworn to uphold the laws of the land and newly naturalized citizens are welcomed to the fold.

The attorneys arrange themselves by avocation—to the left, food and wine aficionados rhapsodize over gastronomic glories. To the right, fitness fanatics relive the delicious agony of marathons and triathlons. Near the bar of the court the airplane nuts, lawyers who not only try aviation cases but are also private pilots, compare prices on the latest advances in avionics. The rest of the troupe passes time by bringing everyone within earshot up to speed on their legal prowess: experts suborned, witnesses impeached, judges bamboozled, juries charmed, verdicts filched. That they are roundly disbelieved by their audience is not a hindrance.

Only a few of the lawyers are under forty, and those are the house counsel for the insurance companies—since today's agenda concerns only the victims, most of the defendants have sent the second team, underlings earning half the rate of their peers in private firms. A few heavy hitters are present nonetheless, because experience has taught that no judge, not even a federal one, can be trusted to stick to a supposedly harmless script.

Although convocations like this one are social as well as professional occasions, Alec Hawthorne has spent the previous evening alone in his room, atop the best hotel in Chicago. An out-of-the-way place of European ambience, he stays there because it has a view of the lake, because its windows open to admit unconditioned air, and because of the wine list in the adjacent restaurant.

Although the hotel was its usual well-run self, Hawthorne is not. Because it is November and Chicago, after a night of fitful sleep he has ventured outdoors only from the revolving door to the rear of a waiting cab, but the crafty wind has found him nonetheless. Under his cashmere topcoat his muscles are clenched in rigor mortis and his teeth would chatter if he emancipated them by unlocking his jaw.

Lonely as well as chilled, what he lacks is Martha. Usually, she is with him—because he likes her company, because she takes care of the nagging snags of travel, because his colleagues envy her competence and sensuality, speculation about which provides him with yet another edge. Although Martha is never eager to encounter the men with whom he plies his trade—whom she calls maggots when she does not call them worse—she comes if he asks. But this time her presence was not an option: The hearing is a step toward the fulfillment of his plan, and the tactic he is about to employ would cause Martha to commit mayhem.

Hawthorne feels a hand on his shoulder. When he turns he sees Ed Haroldson, ally, idol, friend, the dean of aviation litigators. Haroldson, legend has it, was the first attorney in the nation to turn down a million-dollar settlement offer to take a case to trial. The jury gave him two point six and, in the envious corridors of his profession, Ed Haroldson became a god.

In his seventies, small and stout, bald and battered as a cobblestone, Haroldson moves in mind and body like a colt, unpredictable and spry. “How are you, Alec? You look as cold as a goat on skis.”

Hawthorne makes room for Haroldson on the dark oak pew. “I'm okay, Ed. You?”

The old man's eyes are warmer than the room. “One thing about being as old as I am, by the time my toes find out how cold it is, I'll be back in Palm Beach.”

Hawthorne laughs at the familiar shuffle. Haroldson winters in Florida and spends the rest of his time in midtown Manhattan in a brownstone that is the envy of even his most successful peers. His less visible fibers had sprouted during the years spent helping his parents raise enough Tennessee okra to keep the mortgage bankers on the far side of the river.

Hawthorne pats his diminutive colleague on the back. “Congratulations on the result in Chicago. What did they give you, twelve?”

Haroldson laughs the quick titter of a child. Of the twoscore people in the room, he is the only one who finds personal promotion unseemly. “Twelve-five, I believe it was. I got lucky.”

“You've been lucky for fifty years, you old bastard. What do you hear about the Detroit crash?”

“That was a mean one, wasn't it? Folks are going to have the TV shots of that freeway in their minds for a long time. Hope that little girl pulls through.”

“They know anything about cause?”

“They were talking wind shear for a while, but I hear now they think the flaps might not have gotten set.”

“Hard to believe the crew could fuck
that
up. That's about as basic as it gets.”

Haroldson nods. “There's a scary paradox in the business these days, Alec. On the one hand, what with these mergers and all, you got guys flying planes they barely know how to steer, let alone handle in an emergency. On the other, for an experienced pilot, flying has become routine—what with computers and all, these new babies are as exciting as flying a refrigerator. So there you are, thirty thousand feet in the air with a pilot who's green or a pilot who's bored. Either way, they're too damn likely to screw up. Hard to see how to correct the situation, either, except by banning everything newer than the DC-3.” Haroldson's voice slides to a whisper. “Speaking of screwups, I hear your pump had to be primed a few months back.”