Suzy's Case: A Novel (5 page)

That chair was never there and it’s placed, or should I say displaced, in a highly visual location. It screams,
Look at me,
so I’m not surprised Henry has claimed it as his purple-and-orange throne, drawing the attention due a king.

So much for the corner table.

Henry Benson is a high-profile New York City criminal attorney who was forced to give up his injury practice by his professional insurance carrier because of a civil litigation “misadventure.” He committed malpractice in open court in front of his client. He still defends penal prosecutions, but now Henry refers his injured criminals seeking money damages to me.

He chose me—a complete stranger—to take over his civil practice because his bigwig best friend, Dominic Keller, the self-proclaimed “king of all injury attorneys,” innocently told him he thought I was a phenom in the courtroom. The nonnegotiable deal was that I take all or none of Benson’s twenty-one injured criminals, based solely on his short verbal description of each case. And we split the fees fifty-fifty. Oh yeah, the other reason he chose me to handle his injured criminals was so he could tell his best friend, Dominic, to go fuck off, without actually telling him. It’s the case of
Ego v. Ego
.

Forrest Gump would say a Henry Benson case is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. Each Benson case never really is what Benson’s verbal describes it to be or even what it appears to be after review of the file. Each comes with some built-in wrinkle and unapparent twist that offers the prior warning of a land mine you just stepped on.

That said, the thing you do know about a box of chocolates is that each piece of candy comes with a chocolate-coated covering. And, the thing you know with Henry’s injured criminals—or HICs, as I’ve affectionately termed them—is that each HIC is a
bona fide criminal who has been tried, convicted, and jailed for his felonious conduct.

Before Benson singled me out to take over his HICs, I was making a good clean living. My maxim was, No one case is worth losing your license, your career, your self-respect, and the respect of others.

My own clients had relatively pure and straightforward injury cases with none of the potential for blowing up in my face, and none were convicted felons. I was gaining recognition in the legal community as an up-and-coming plaintiff’s lawyer, and attorneys from all over the city were sending me their medical malpractice and general negligence cases. My practice was moving forward steadily, but unfortunately, my expenses were growing and my efforts weren’t exactly yielding retirement dough.

So, despite hating anything to do with moral turpitude—which includes persons of perpetual criminal disposition with injury claims—I accepted Henry’s deal for the money, the whole money, and nothing but the money, so help me God. On the first case alone,
just weeks after receiving all the HIC files, I made a bundle with very little effort.

Since taking over Henry’s injury clients I’ve identified four fake cases. That makes nearly 25 percent of the whole. For those, I moved to be relieved as counsel, basing my application on attorney-client irreconcilable differences, because it’s an ethical violation to come straight-out and tell the judge that your client’s a fraud. You go figure that ethics code out. The Rules, yeah, right.

On two of these four cases, relief was granted by the judge. On the other two, permission was denied, and I had to continue representing two plaintiffs I knew to be attempting fraud. For one, I have an offer of settlement to the tune of seventy-five thousand dollars, which sum my client has rejected against my legal advice. He wants an even hundred. I restated to him in the clearest terms my legal wisdom: hogs get slaughtered. The other case had been dismissed as a result of my intentional malpractice, which had landed me in front of the Disciplinary Committee this morning. That brings us up-to-date …

… well, except for the fact that three HICs have threatened me with bodily harm, and on a fourth occasion, I had to wrestle my letter opener out of the murderous hands of a convicted killer attempting to repeat his offense. In any event, these are the basic costs involved in being an HIC lawyer in the city that never sleeps.

I take in Henry’s stately appearance before I approach. Just under six feet, in his early sixties, Henry Benson is slender and seemingly in good shape. He shaves what remains of his hair with a number 1 clipper giving him the look of military strength. He has a strong jaw, large ears, and a warrior’s Roman nose disproportionate to his smallish head, but altogether he’s a very good-looking man. He’s wearing cowboy boots, as always, with his blue pinstripe suit—which doesn’t work for me since I know he’s from Brooklyn. The one thing you can’t take away from Henry is his presence. It’s strong, masculine, and authoritative, and everyone gets it.

He signals me to come with a firm wave and, as I approach his table, he looks over and around me to anybody and everybody. He wants to see who’s noticing him, which, of course, is status quo for a narcissistic
egomaniac. I dismiss the thought of bowing, deciding instead to greet him standing tall.

“Hi, Henry. I just got out of court on one of your cases.”

“How much did we make?”

“We didn’t make. It was a Disciplinary Committee hearing. I lost. It cost me twenty-five on the sanction and four thousand in legal bills.”

“Take half out of this.” He hands me one of the four file folders that are sitting on the floor. It’s different, newer looking than the other three.

I sit down with the folder in the skimpy chair waiting for me. “Am I going to get a verbal now?”

“I’ve trained you well. Before I begin, do you want a Mega Boca Coca Java Mundo decaf skim latte?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Very well then. What’s that on your lapel?”

“Mustard and kraut backlash. I tried to slip some hottie the dog.”

He lifts a confused brow, then begins. “The case I just handed you is Betty and Bert Beecher. It’s a medical malpractice case I just settled for six hundred thousand dollars. Since I can’t practice civil law anymore, I naturally resolved the matter in claim. No formal lawsuit was brought, but I did allow the insurance company to take Betty and Bert’s preaction statements under oath.”

“Henry, I thought—”

Henry, angry, stops me cold. “What did I tell you about interrupting?”

“Never do it.”

“Correct. Now, listen. You’ll have no questions when I’m done. You’re going to earn your fee if you can get Bert Beecher to sign off on the proposed settlement. It was Betty who was injured as a result of some cosmetic surgery she had on her face—chin, nose, brow lift, lips, eyelids. The perimenopausal fab five. At the start of the procedure the surgeon placed hard plastic protective lenses in her eyes for intraoperative shielding. You know, so nothing got in her eyes. These were inserted after Betty was under the effects of anesthesia so she had no idea she had a foreign body covering her baby blues. At the
end of the procedures, the surgeon forgot to take out these nonporous cornea shields and she was discharged home with them in, stuck to her eyeballs. She had no clue about the shields because her eyes were swollen shut from the eye job itself, or so she thought. After ten calls to the surgeon over four days, he finally took a minute out of his busy surgical schedule to see her. He immediately identified the problem and had to remove the shields, stat, so he strapped her down to his exam table, then jabbed forceps in her eyes, ripping the shields out. I say ripping, because they became glued to her corneas from the lack of moisture. The malpractice took place about six months ago and she’s got permanently scratched corneas. The problem is, Bert, her good-for-nothing ex-husband, is insisting he get half the client share of the money for his claim for loss of services on behalf of the uninjured spouse.”

Henry stops talking, and more than a nanosecond later, I inquire, “If I ask you a question now, will I be cutting you off?”

“No,” Henry explains. “I paused in excess of the acceptable break time between sentences, so a question is fair game.”

“Why am I getting the case if it’s already settled for digits like that? That’s a big number for scratched corneas.”

“Bert knows I can’t practice civil law anymore. He knows I can’t institute a formal legal proceeding because of the problem I had and he’s using that as leverage against me. Bert says either I get his ex-wife to give him half her recovery as payment for his claim or make up the difference out of my fee. I don’t take kindly to ultimatums, especially from a Louisiana hick like him.” A hick HIC, I think to myself, that’s too funny. If Henry only knew. He continues.

“I told Betty I was referring the matter to you. I explained to her that you’d start the formal lawsuit by serving a summons and complaint on the surgeon and see it through to conclusion to ensure she gets the client’s share of the money to the exclusion of her extorting ex-husband. If it goes to a jury, Bert won’t get a penny, not with his rap sheet, which happens to include a criminal conviction for attempted murder. So, if you can get him to sign off, you pocket half the fee for doing nothing. A gift. If not, you’ll have to work on the case, knowing
it’s a guaranteed payday because I was already offered six hundred thousand in response to my claim letter to the insurance carrier. That’s your verbal. Have fun. And don’t underestimate Bert, he’s smarter than he looks. By the way, if your interruption earlier was to say you thought I couldn’t practice civil law anymore, I’ll have you know that settling a case in claim by writing a simple letter is not considered the formal practice of law according to how I interpret the applicable regulations. You need to file suit for your conduct to be considered the practice of law.”

Henry reaches down and picks up one of the other three folders, which I assume is the sickle cell case. It’s not skinny like Beecher’s file. It’s thick and heavy, like the other two remaining on the floor. As I take it, I note the date of accident penned on the outside of the folder. With that date of loss, way before Henry and I ever met, I should’ve gotten this file when I got the rest of the HIC cases. Our deal was a take-all-or-take-none proposition, meaning I’ll give you my big-dollar cases but you must also take the crappy ones. So obviously, Henry had held this one out, putting a dagger through the heart of our deal. That ain’t right.

But what’s more significant about this date of loss is that it is six years ago. This lawsuit should be over and done with by now. It’s a stale case and there’s always a reason for that, and there’s always a disgruntled client because of the unreasonable wait.

Anyway, I’ll never forget his words when I asked him if he wanted to put our agreement in writing. “A guy like me, with clients like mine, doesn’t need a piece of paper to enforce a deal,” he’d said then. “I trust you. You trust me. That’s the only thing we have to lose here.” Yeah, right. I’m angry but say nothing, not a word. I mean, he’s giving me a gift on the Beecher case that’s worth no less than a hundred grand in my pocket and he’s handing over the one he’d been holding out on me. I guess I’m ahead of the game. It’s just his attitude toward trust that bothers me.

“This is the Suzy Williams file,” Henry says, “the girl who sustained brain damage from her sickle cell disease when she was six.”

“Right, the one you told me about.”

“Yes, the one I told you about.”

“I’m listening. No interruptions, I promise.”

“Yes, the verbal. Well, uh, the verbal on this case is there is no case.”

“I thought you told me they mismanaged her condition in the hospital.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told you.”

“So, what changed?”

“Defense counsel served me with a motion to dismiss the case, so I had to pay for an expert medical review. My expert said no case. There’s a memo in the file from my expert doctor, attached to the defendant’s motion for summary judgment seeking dismissal.”

“What am I missing here? Are you telling me you didn’t have the case reviewed by a qualified medical expert
before
you started the lawsuit to avoid this exact scenario?” I pause, giving him time to respond. Nothing. “Henry, you know that rule ensures you don’t sue a doctor or hospital that doesn’t deserve it and, more important, so that you don’t give the injured client false hope of recovery.”

“Don’t bother me with details,” Henry says dismissively. “You know I don’t like details. Just handle things … somehow.”

“By ‘somehow’ are you suggesting I make a cross-motion to the court requesting that you be relieved as counsel?” He kind of looks up toward the gold ceiling with a “that’s not such a bad idea” expression, then brings his head down and deadeyes me with force and authority.

“You’re their lawyer now. And by ‘their’ I mean the injured child, whose name is Suzy, and her mother, June. Since you’re their lawyer and my good name is on the legal documents, just get us relieved as counsel as gracefully as possible.”

“I’m on it, Henry. No worries,” I offer confidently.

“Good, now get out of here. I’m having a get-together with a young Asian girl I met on Match.com. She kept giving me the wink, so I thought I’d give her the opportunity to give me more. Now get going.”

“On my way, Henry.” He immediately starts looking over and around me to anybody and everybody the way he did on my approach. Two steps into my escape, I hear Henry.

“And one more thing.” I pivot one-eighty on my wing tips.

“Listening, sir,” I reply, playing into his ego.

“I saw the way you looked at the Williams file when I handed it to you,” Henry continues, “the date of loss, that is. It
was
a holdout. I was handling the case the day you received delivery of the rest of my files and I held this one out.” Henry pauses and waits for a response. I don’t accommodate him. When he realizes this, he fills in the gap. “This little girl was a child prodigy who became a spastic quadriplegic with severe brain damage as a result of what happened in that hospital. She’s badly brain damaged, permanent feeding tube and all. So I thought they’d be throwing the money at me. You and I both know the money follows the injury in an emotional case like this. I didn’t know you could end up like her from sickle cell, without somebody doing something wrong. I appreciate your not calling it to my attention, the holdout status of the case, that is. And yes, on this one I was practicing law. Thanks for saying nothing about that, too.”