Dark Tide (30 page)

Private practice had been good to Ogden since he arrived back in Boston as a decorated veteran one year ago. He focused on equity and corporation law, and found that his talents were well-suited to working alone. He was bold, aggressive, shrewd, opinionated, intuitive, compassionate, unorthodox, and he often took the measure of a man’s character before he took his case—a combination of contradictions that would leave him unfulfilled at a large law firm, where making money was the number one priority. Ogden liked making money as much as anyone, but he would never take a case
just
for money. In fact, he often took cases
pro bono
; the factors that mattered most to him were the quality of the individual he was representing, the merits of his client’s case, and his ability to help his client achieve justice. He loved private practice, and many of his clients had become his friends.

For a year, he had looked for a way to do more, to go beyond the
pro bono
work, beyond his contributions as a member of the Boston Chamber of Commerce and the ecclesiastical work he did for the Episcopal Church, and to find an honorable way to share his talents for a greater cause.

So when Judge Hitchcock had called, Hugh Ogden had answered. If he could help find the truth in the molasses case, six weeks of his time would be no sacrifice at all.

Ogden had never been part of, let alone presided over, a case so massive—but then again, almost no one had. The Boston legal community was abuzz about the Superior Court’s decision to consolidate the 119 separate legal claims against United States Industrial Alcohol into a single legal proceeding, creating in effect, if not by strict legal definition, the largest class-action suit to date in Massachusetts history and one of the largest ever in U.S. legal annals.

The Superior Court had decided to consolidate the cases during the preliminary filing stage, at the request of U.S. Industrial Alcohol. USIA had argued that the plaintiffs’ claims were similar, and, more practically, the courtroom simply wasn’t large enough to hold all the lawyers. More than 125 attorneys had crammed the courthouse, and many of Boston’s finest legal minds had been part of the overflow that spilled and shuffled into the hallway. The rest could barely move without bumping into each other. The comical scene symbolized the complexity of the case and the difficulty of trying them all individually. During a trial, there would have been no room for the lawyers, let alone witnesses, stenographers, and members of the press and public. USIA had recommended that the cases be consolidated and that two lead lawyers be appointed to represent each party; the court had agreed.

Ogden believed that the consolidation made sense, but he also suspected that USIA had another motive for requesting the unprecedented co-joining action. If the company’s lawyers could successfully discredit just one witness or refute one piece of documentary evidence, the defense could undermine all the plaintiffs’ claims, and their cases against USIA would tumble like a house of cards. Had the cases remained severed, one “poisoned” plaintiff witness would not taint the other claims.

The basic arguments for USIA and the plaintiffs could be simply stated, though Ogden knew this fact alone would not necessarily ensure a swift proceeding. The plaintiffs would claim that the molasses tank had been structurally deficient, built without safeguards, and carelessly located in a busy, congested neighborhood. They would seek financial damages for the victims’ families and for property owners. USIA would argue in defense that anarchists operating in Boston during the time of the disaster had dropped a bomb inside the tank just after noon on January 15, 1919, and the resulting explosion had destroyed the tank and caused the deaths, injuries, and property destruction. The company would also argue that the North End waterfront area, on the periphery of the neighborhood, had been used for years for commercial purposes.

If USIA could prove its case, the company almost certainly would be absolved of any legal liability. Ogden had already heard that USIA was spending more than $50,000 on expert witnesses to buttress its case—including scientists, metallurgists, academics, and explosion experts.

The anarchist argument intrigued Ogden, since he believed that it was plausible; whether it was provable was another question. The year 1919 had been the most chaotic and violent one he could remember. And while things had calmed somewhat in the early months of 1920, the spring had brought more disturbing events.

In early March, an anarchist named Andrea Salsedo, whom authorities believed was one of the key Galleanists behind the rash of bombings in June 1919, was arrested, and held in custody for two months while government agents questioned him. There had been rumors that Salsedo had cooperated with authorities and furnished the names of other prominent anarchists, but these had never been confirmed. Incredibly, when agents left him alone for a few moments in early May, Salsedo apparently jumped to his death from a fourteenth-story window. His fellow anarchists had protested loudly that Salsedo had first been beaten for information, and, after he had divulged all he knew, had then been hurled from the window, a claim that had never been proved and that Ogden found impossible to believe.

On April 15, two employees of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company were shot dead and robbed of the company’s payroll in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Two men armed with handguns did the shooting, and the killers were picked up by colleagues in a getaway car, escaping with more than $15,000. On May 5, police arrested two avowed anarchists for the murders, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The pair gave false or evasive answers about their political beliefs and their whereabouts at the time of the murder, though both later protested strenuously that they believed they had been arrested for deportation purposes and had no inkling of the seriousness of the charges against them. Sacco and Vanzetti were now awaiting trial for the South Braintree murders. Vanzetti alone was also indicted, and later tried and convicted, for a Christmas Eve 1919 hold-up in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and he was scheduled to be sentenced for
that
crime in about a week.

Ogden had the unsettling feeling that the controversial Salsedo suicide, coupled with the Sacco and Vanzetti arrests, could set the anarchists in motion once again.

If it did, the uproar would provide timely energy to USIA’s argument that anarchists had destroyed the Boston molasses tank in 1919. But Ogden knew that the court had asked him to preside over the molasses case precisely because he would not get caught up in any uproar. He would issue his report based strictly on the evidence in this case.

Any new anarchist activities, if they did occur, might infuse
energy
into USIA’s case. But
evidence
was something altogether different.

Now that there were only two small teams of attorneys working the case, Ogden’s courtroom would be sufficiently large to house them. Whether it would be big enough to contain their egos was still open to debate.

Ogden knew both lead attorneys—Damon Everett Hall for the plaintiffs and Charles Francis Choate for the defense—and thought it would be much more entertaining to be a third-party observer rather than the jurist caught in the crossfire between two of the most brilliant, powerful, resourceful, sharp-witted, and indefatigable lawyers in the state. Both were wealthy men whose lineages ran deep, whose ancestors arrived on American soil years before the Revolution. Both were men who believed they were
entitled
, that winning was practically a birthright.

Ogden liked Hall better as a man. Choate may have been the more intellectual barrister, but Ogden thought that his fellow Harvard Law School graduate’s aristocratic gentility often camouflaged a condescending air of superiority. Hall, a graduate of Boston University, was no less astute than Choate, but enjoyed a good legal street fight at the same time. He had a tough streak, an edge, a poker player’s willingness to take risks, even a sense of sarcasm in the courtroom that Ogden found appealing. Hall and Choate were both men of means, both well-respected attorneys, both scions of Boston’s oldest money, but Hall seemed more comfortable with average men, a trait Ogden believed he himself shared with the plaintiffs’ lawyer. Choate was diligent and honest enough, but also facile, bombastic, and often reluctant to get his hands dirty, traits Ogden found distasteful. The two men had chosen sides well in this case; it strained Ogden’s imagination to envision Choate representing poor Italian immigrants and Irish city workers in their fight against a major national corporation. Conversely, Hall would relish the task, viewing himself as a guardian of the common man’s rights.

None of this would matter tomorrow, of course. Once Ogden set foot in the courtroom and ascended to the bench, he would subjugate his personal feelings about both men, and rely on the rule of law and his own strength of judgment and fairness.

Ogden finished his work and prepared to leave the office, which for at least the next six weeks, would no longer be his regular workplace. He might stop in occasionally after the molasses hearings had concluded for the day, but he expected the testimony to consume most of his time. He had even informed Hall and Choate that he was willing to continue the hearings until 10
P.M.
any time it was necessary, to give laborers a chance to testify without jeopardizing a day’s pay, or worse, their jobs. Both lawyers had grumbled before grudgingly conceding Ogden’s point and agreeing to the unusual schedule.

The lightning flashed in the northern sky and the thunder rumbled closer. Ogden hoped for a torrential late-afternoon rainstorm to cool the city.

One other prominent Boston attorney would play a role in how history would mark the molasses case. Dudley H. Dorr, owner of two Commercial Street buildings destroyed by the flood, became trustee for the consolidated cases brought by the plaintiffs. On July 1, 1918, Dorr had joined forces with Boston attorney Richard Hale to form Hale & Dorr, which would one day become Boston’s largest and most prestigious law firm. For now, Dorr’s participation in the biggest civil suit in Massachusetts history—the Great Boston Molasses Flood case—meant that the court proceedings were officially catalogued as
Dorr v. United States Industrial Alcohol
.

“This was one of the worst catastrophes which has visited the City of Boston in my remembrance,” declared attorney Damon Hall in his opening statement for the plaintiffs. “We have all been accustomed to make fun of cold molasses, but this experience, which occurred in the heart of Boston at noon in January, 1919, taught us that cold molasses has death-dealing and destructive powers equal to the tornado or the cyclone when it is suddenly unloosed.”

Hall’s statement came on Wednesday, August 11, the second day of the hearings; day one was a succession of scheduling and procedural details that needed to be ironed out at the outset of any major trial or hearing. The lengthiest haggling had come during discussion of the court’s start time. On Monday mornings, Damon Hall’s train arrived in Boston from his suburban Belmont home just before 11
A.M.
, and his colleague, Endicott Peabody Saltonstall, arrived at 10:30
A.M.
Thus, Ogden agreed that Monday proceedings would begin at 11
A.M.
Since all the lawyers would stay in Boston overnight during the week, Ogden ordered court to begin at 9:30
A.M.
Tuesday through Friday. “I feel a little pressure to get started and moving on this case,” Ogden told the attorneys. Henry Dolan, one of USIA’s lawyers, urged Ogden not to hold hearings on Saturdays. Ogden agreed reluctantly: “These gentlemen who have families at the shore, I think would go on strike if we tried to sit on Saturday,” the auditor lamented.