The Rainmaker

THE SETTING MIGHT BE COMICAL IF I wasn't so nervous. I'm sure the casual observer would see the humor, but no one in the courtroom is smiling. Especially me.



I'm alone at my counsel table, the piles of motions and briefs stacked neatly before me. My notes and quick references are on two legal pads, at my fingertips, strategically arranged. Deck is seated behind me, not at the table, where he might be of some benefit, but in a chair just inside the bar, at least three arm-lengths away, so it appears as if I'm alone.



I feel very isolated.



Across the narrow aisle, the table for the defense is rather heavily populated. Leo F. Drummond sits in the center, of course, facing the bench, associates surrounding him. Two on each side. Drummond is sixty years old, an alum of Yale Law, with thirty-six years of trial experience. T. Pierce Morehouse is thirty-nine, Yale Law, a Trent & Brent partner, fourteen years' experience in all courts. B. Dewey Clay Hill the Third is thirty-one, Co-



lumbia, not yet a partner, six years' trial experience. M. Alec Plunk Junior is twenty-eight, two years' experience, and is making his initial foray into the case because, I'm sure, he went to Harvard. The Honorable Tyrone Kipler, now presiding, also went to Harvard. Kipler is black. Plunk is too. Harvard-educated black lawyers are not too common in Memphis. Trent & Brent just happened to have one, and so here he is, present no doubt to try and strike a bond with His Honor. And, if things go as expected, we'll one day have a jury sitting over there. Half the registered voters in this county are black, so it's safe to assume the jury will be about fifty-fifty. M. Alec Plunk Junior will be used, it is hoped, to develop some silent harmony and trust with certain jurors.



If the jury happens to have a female Cambodian, there's no doubt in my mind that Trent & Brent will simply reach into the depths of their roster, find themselves another one and bring her to court.



The fifth member of Great Benefit's legal team is Bran-don Fuller Grone, pitifully unnumeraled and inexplicably uninitialed. I can't understand why he doesn't proclaim himself B. Fuller Grone, like a real big-firm lawyer. He's twenty-seven, two years out of Memphis State, where he finished number one in his class and left a wide trail. He was a legend when I started law school, and I crammed for first-year exams by using his old outlines.



Ignoring the two years M. Alec Plunk Junior spent clerking for a federal judge, there are fifty-eight years of experience packed tightly around the defense table.



I received my law license less than a month ago. My staff has flunked the bar exam six times.



I performed all this math late last night while digging through the library at Memphis State, a place I can't seem to shake. The law firm of Rudy Baylor owns a grand total



of seventeen law books, all leftovers from school, and virtually worthless.



Seated behind the lawyers are two guys with hard-nosed corporate looks about them. I suspect they're executives of Great Benefit. One looks familiar. I think he was here when I argued the motion to dismiss. I didn't pay ,nuch attention then, and I'm not too terribly concerned about these guys now. I have enough on my mind.



I'm pretty tense, but if Harvey Hale were sitting up there, I'd be a wreck. In fact, I probably wouldn't be here.



However, the Honorable Tyrone Kipler is presiding. He told me on the phone yesterday, during one of our many recent conversations, that this will be his first day on the bench. He's signed some orders and performed some other routine little jobs, but this is the first argument to referee.



The day after Kipler was sworn in, Drummond filed a motion to remove the case to federal court. He's claiming that Bobby Ott, the agent who sold the policy to the Blacks, has been included as a defendant for all the wrong reasons. Ott, we think, is still a resident of Tennessee. He's a defendant. The Blacks, residents of Tennessee, are the plaintiffs. Complete diversity of citizenship between the parties must exist for federal jurisdiction to apply. Ott defeats diversity because, as we allege, he lives here, and for this reason and this reason alone, the case cannot be a federal one. Drummond filed a massive brief in support of his argument that Ott should not be a defendant.



As long as Harvey Hale was sitting, circuit court was the perfect place to seek justice. But as soon as Kipler assumed the case, then truth and fairness could be found only in federal court. The amazing thing about Drum-mond's motion was the timing. Kipler took it as a personal affront. I agreed with him, for what it was worth.



We're all set to argue the pending motions. In addition



to the request to remove the case, Drummond has his morion for security of costs and morion for sanctions. I took heated issue with his motion for sanctions, so I in turn filed a motion for sanctions, claiming his motion for sanctions was frivolous and mean-spirited. The battle over sanctions becomes a separate war in most lawsuits, according to Deck, and it's best not to get it started. I'm