Irreparable Harm (35 page)

Sasha’s heart quickened. She scanned the rest of the sheet. Under travel, there were a dozen or so entries, but two jumped out. The first had Monday’s date and the notation
Calvaruso 1667
. The other read
Jones 1480
and had Friday’s date. She circled it. Flight 1480 was Metz’s redeye back from Washington State. There were two other notations that listed Jones and Calvaruso. Calvaruso’s Pittsburgh to D.C. flight and a flight from Pittsburgh to Seattle for Jones on Tuesday morning.

Harold Jones, recently hired as an independent consultant and in possession of a smartphone issued by Patriotech, was currently in the Seattle area with a ticket to travel on across the United States on a plane that had been retrofitted with a RAGS link.

Sasha stared at the expense sheet in her hand. The room got very small and her mouth went dry. This was it. She craned her neck to check the gallery. No Connelly.

“Ms. McCandless!”  Judge Cook cut through her mounting excitement.

She sprang out of her chair. “Your honor?”

“I am so terribly sorry to interrupt your daydreaming, counselor. Would you consider deigning to respond to the Court’s question?”

“Of course. I apologize, your honor.” She could feel Vivian’s eyes boring into her back. She looked at Mickey in a silent plea for help.

He spoke slowly. “Your honor, if I may. Before Ms. McCandless addresses the issue of how grounding such a small number of planes could be deemed disruptive to her client’s business, I do want to add that, if you grant our order, and subsequent testing indicates the planes are not defective, we would be willing to take into consideration any costs related to the interruption to Hemisphere Air’s business later on down the road, when we make a settlement demand in the class action. That’s not in our papers, but it seems like a more than fair thing to do.”

Sasha got her feet under her, thankful Mickey had hit his stride enough to repeat the judge’s question for her benefit.

“Your honor, while Mr. Collins’ offer might seem more than fair to him, it is a complete nonstarter for my client. First, Hemisphere Air is confident that, should this case even proceed beyond the class certification stage, it will be thrown out on a motion to dismiss. Why, then, would Hemisphere Air incur a loss now in the hopes of offsetting it in a settlement that, frankly, is unlikely to ever come to pass?”

She paused to gather her thoughts and the judge jumped in. “You think I’ll dismiss it? Why, do you have information that one of the pilots had a Primanti’s sandwich before take off?”

He was smiling. Was she supposed to laugh? The court reporter stifled a giggle and Brett chuckled. Mickey, not in on the joke, looked baffled. She settled for a small smile.

Then she continued, “Second, the notion that there’s anything wrong with any of Hemisphere Air’s planes, including, I might add, the one that crashed three days ago, is pure speculation.”

All traces of the judge’s smile disappeared, as though it had never existed.

“I think we can go out on a limb and assume that there was something wrong with the downed plane,” he said.

“Maybe so, maybe not, your honor. The circumstances surrounding Monday’s tragedy will come out through discovery. In the meantime, the harm to Hemisphere Air’s shareholders, who will lose value; employees, who will lose hours and corresponding pay; and travelers, who will be inconvenienced, are all real.”

“Surely, you aren’t equating the loss of value to
shareholders
with the loss of human life, Ms. McCandless? I thought even Prescott & Talbott lawyers would have some minimal humanity.” Judge Cook’s nostrils flared and he leaned back in his chair, recoiling like she was something fetid and unappealing.

“Of course not,” Sasha said, moving in for the kill, while he was good and agitated.

 “The irreparable harm will come from the public relations fallout that Hemisphere Air will sustain. Imagine the loss of trust the company will suffer when it suddenly takes some, but not all, planes out of service shortly after a fatal crash and then puts them back in service, saying there was never anything wrong with them in the first place, which is, after all, the likely outcome? Travelers will lose confidence in the safety of Hemisphere Air’s fleet. Not to mention, they will be skittish about booking flights on Hemisphere Air. They’ll worry that the company might pull more planes out of service, they won’t want to take the risk of being stranded or delayed. It will be a
nightmare
. The damage to the company’s image will be irreparable.”

The judge stared at her. Then he said slowly, “The public relations hit to your client’s reputation is an irreparable harm that outweighs the loss of human life? Is that your argument, Ms. McCandless?”

“No, your honor. The certain harm to Hemisphere Air outweighs the remote and theoretical loss of life. Any plane could crash. Why stop with eleven? Why not ground Hemisphere Air’s entire fleet? Or, for that matter, why stop with Hemisphere Air? Why not ground all U.S. commercial flights until we know for sure what happened on Monday night?”

Sasha stood there for a minute, waiting to see if Judge Cook had any more questions. He did not. He just shook his head in a show of disgust.

Sasha felt disgusting. She had spun the argument out to its  absurd conclusion. Aside from Mickey, everyone in the room probably thought she was the lowest form of scum. Except for Vivian. Vivian probably thought she hadn’t gone far enough in her defense of the company.

“I’ve heard enough. Mr. Collins, I am going to grant your motion. Ms. McCandless raised one good point—I’m certain it was quite by accident. Are you sure you want to limit it to the eleven planes you identified in your papers? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Mickey continued to play the role of World’s Most Reasonable Plaintiff’s Attorney. “Yes, your honor. The plaintiffs believe the planes most likely to share any defect that might have existed on Flight 1667 are the eleven that we have identified on the basis of make, model, and time in service.”

The judge leaned forward and pointed at Sasha. “In light of Ms. McCandless’ cavalier attitude toward human life, I am going to provide a copy of this temporary order to the U.S. Marshals and ask them to ensure that the affected planes are grounded immediately. I would not normally involve the Marshals Service in a civil matter, but the callous disregard of Hemisphere Air’s counsel causes me grave concern that this order will not be taken seriously absent law enforcement involvement.”

He arched a brow and scrawled his name with a flourish across the proposed order that Sasha had drafted for Mickey to submit. He motioned for the deputy marshal against the wall to come up and take it.

“Have your office make copies of that, will you?” he said, as he handed it to the deputy. Without further comment, he stood and left the courtroom, trailed by Brett and the court reporter.

Having taken her scolding like a big girl, Sasha was packing up her briefcase and steeling herself to talk to her client, when Mickey walked over and stuck out his hand.

“Well done, counselor.”

“You, too.” She lowered her voice and said, “I won’t forget this. Thank you, Mickey.”

He held her elbow while he said, “Just make sure your air marshal friend nails Irwin’s ass to the wall. Where is he, anyway?”

Good question, Sasha thought.

“He must have gotten held up in the U.S. Marshal’s office.”

“You okay facing the music alone?” He inclined his head in Vivian’s direction.

She gave a slight shrug. “It can’t be worse than what’s going to happen when I get back to the office.”

She slid the printouts from Patriotech into an unlabeled folder and buried it in the middle of the papers in her bag.

Mickey was still standing there, waiting for something.

“I’m sorry I suspected you were working with Irwin.” That had probably stung.

He waved it off. “Forget it. Listen, no matter what happens with those soulless pricks at your shop, you’re the real deal. What you did today, that was good.”

He suddenly looked embarrassed, like he’d said too much. He clasped her on the shoulder and walked away, past Vivian, and out the door.

She appreciated what Mickey tried to do with his pep talk. She might have been on the side of the angels with this argument, even though her behavior was, without question, unethical, but Judge Cook had her number.

She was nothing but a corporate whore.
If Mickey had filed a similar motion in the case, without the backdrop of the RAGS link and the murders, Sasha had no doubt she would have stood in this courtroom and made the same arguments she’d made today. The only difference was she would have meant them.

She pushed it out of her mind. She needed to find Connelly and pass along the information about Jones and the flight from Seattle. Then, she could ruminate on what was left of her career.

Sasha walked over to her client. Vivian had her cell phone jammed in her ear and was hissing at someone. Probably reporting back to the board. She clicked it shut without saying goodbye.

“Vivian,” Sasha said, plastering on a smile and extending her hand, “it’s nice to finally meet you. I wish the circumstances were different.”

Vivian’s eyes were gray and cold. They looked like the October sky. And, just like the sky, they held the promise of thunder.

“Sasha.” She took Sasha’s hand and arranged her mouth into a smile.

“So, not the outcome we were hoping for today. Cook was a bad draw.”

Noah had told her to never apologize to a client for a bad outcome. You didn’t want them to get the idea that it was your fault.

“Indeed.” Vivian said.

“I assume you’ll want to file an appeal if we can? I’ll get an associate on it when I get back to the office, but the judge’s order sounds interlocutory in nature, so we may not be able to appeal.”

Final orders were appealable. Interlocutory, or non-final orders, were not. Typically a temporary restraining order was not considered final because it was, well, temporary. But, appellate lawyers rarely let a little detail like that get in the way of a good argument.

Vivian’s answer surprised Sasha. “I’m not sure we do. An appeal may just drag this out and, as you noted, it is a public relations disaster. It might be better to just ground the planes, do the testing, and move on. We’ll need to make a formal recommendation to the board, of course. But, that’s my current thinking. We can talk through the strategy on the way out to headquarters.”

“You want me to attend the board meeting with you?”

“You’re our company’s lawyer for this matter. Of course, you’ll attend the meeting. It’ll be a conference call, actually, given the short notice. And we’ll also need to issue a press release. Public relations will want to run that by you.” Vivian smiled again. Sasha had never seen a smile so devoid of warmth.

“Are you sure you don’t want to have someone else …”

“Do you want to run with the big dogs or not, Sasha?”

Sasha just nodded, not quite sure what to say.

As they waited for the elevator in awkward silence, Sasha checked her phone to avoid further conversation with the amazon standing next to her.

Connelly had texted her during the argument.

Irwin called. Going to meet him now. Good luck. After argument, GO STRAIGHT BACK TO OFFICE.

No worries there. As soon as she got through this presentation to the Hemisphere Air board of directors she planned to hole up in her office and bury herself in paper. She was glad to be done with the intrigue and drama. She didn’t feel like a very big dog.

Chapter 41

Vivian wasn’t much for small talk. They walked in silence to the parking garage in the USX Tower directly across the street from the courthouse. As they crossed, Sasha saw the sign for The Doubletree, just one street away, and wondered briefly if Anton had undergone surgery to reconstruct his face yet.

They pushed through the doors to the lobby in silence and crossed over to the elevator bank that serviced the garage in silence. Waited for the elevator in silence and boarded it.

Not until they exited the elevator did Vivian speak again. She pointed to a shiny, dark red Mercedes SUV parked by itself just to the right of the elevator bank.