The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco (11 page)

“That wouldn’t cover the filing fees,” she told him. “Is that it?”

“I get a dollar a day for snack money. I could start saving it,” said Phillip.

“Let’s be realistic,” said Ms. Johnson. She pulled out a long, thin line of gum and twisted it around her finger while she thought. Finally, she said, “You’re going to need a civil lawyer who will do your case pro bono.”

“Pro who?” Phillip asked.

“Pro bono is Latin. It means ‘for the public good.’ In other words,” she explained, “you need a lawyer who will work for free.”

“Lawyers do that?” he asked.

“Some do, depending on the case. You need someone who believes principle is more important than pay. It’s got to be someone who is smart and tough and isn’t afraid to stand up against the whole town if he has to. There’s only one Hardingtown lawyer who would be willing to even consider such a thing. I’ll arrange for you to meet him.”

I
n the era before automobiles, a circus would march down the main street. When the parade was to begin, the circus owner, called the governor, would yell to the townspeople, “Hold your horses,” so they wouldn’t be frightened by the exotic animals. To noncircus people, the expression came to mean “Have patience while you wait for something.”

The next day, as Phillip waited for the mystery lawyer, he could hardly hold his horses. Ms. Johnson was supposed to meet Phillip at the snack bar at 2
P.M.
and introduce them. Phillip borrowed a law book and took it to the snack bar to study while he waited. The book was full of interesting cases. In each, two people, the plaintiff and the defendant, would tell their story. Then the judge would say who won the case and why.

Phillip was reading about a tavern fight when he saw Sam heading his way. He didn’t want to be rude, but he hoped Sam wouldn’t want to chat.

Sam sat at his table. “What’s up?” he asked.

“The sky,” said Phillip.

“I heard about the suspension,” Sam said. “Bad break.”

“I guess,” said Phillip. He looked over Sam’s shoulder for the mystery lawyer.

“How’s your case coming?” Sam asked.

“You know about that?” asked Phillip.

“Like they say in Disneyland, it’s a small world.”

Phillip grinned. He filled Sam in on the details of the lawsuit and told him about the meeting.

“Maybe you should leave before the lawyer gets here,” said Phillip, trying to be polite. “It’s a business meeting.”

A man with a suit and tie entered the snack bar and went to the front counter. Phillip strained to see if it was him. Sam went to the counter and took the man’s order for an egg-salad sandwich and a cup of coffee to go.

Phillip was disappointed that Sam, and not the important-looking man, sat back down at his table. After what seemed like a long time, Ms. Johnson came in. She was alone. She headed straight for Phillip’s table.

“I see the two of you have met,” she said.

“How have you been?” asked Sam as their hands found each other. The handshake lasted a long time.

“I thought you were going to bring the lawyer,” Phillip said to Ms. Johnson.

“Didn’t he tell you?” she replied. “Sam is the lawyer.”

Phillip felt he had misjudged Ms. Johnson. She didn’t seem like the kind of person to joke. But she had to be joking. Sam was a cashier. A blind cashier.

“Sam works at the snack bar,” Phillip said. “He’s not a lawyer.”

“Then I guess they’ll have to take down that portrait of him at the law school,” she said. She blew a grape-scented bubble. It burst like one of his dad’s exploding cigars.

Phillip looked at Sam. “Are you a lawyer?” he asked.

“I don’t practice anymore,” Sam said. “But I still have my license.”

“He retired a few years back,” explained Ms. Johnson. “He was a pioneer for blind lawyers in his younger days, successfully forcing the state to make them give blind law students special accommodations so they could practice law.”

Sam and Ms. Johnson talked about a case that Sam had argued before the United States Supreme Court. They also talked about Sam retiring, and Ms. Johnson kidded him about taking the part-time job at the snack bar because he missed being part of the legal community.

“Are you going to be my lawyer?” Phillip asked Sam.

“I don’t know,” said Sam. “I have to be selective when I decide whether or not to take a pro bono case.”

“Why?”

“Because some clients are quitters,” said Sam. “They want you to work for them. But in the end, when the case gets tough, they run away.”

Phillip knew what Sam was referring to—the time he left school so he didn’t have to play the one-on-one game with B.B. and the time when he decided to run away after B.B. teased him about being a circus boy.

“If you’ll be my lawyer on this case,” Phillip said, “I won’t quit.”

“No matter how hard it gets?” Sam asked.

“I promise,” said Phillip. “I’m done with running away from my problems.”

Sam stood up and extended his hand. Even as Phillip shook it, he wondered if he could live up to his promise.

W
alking in floppy shoes and breathing through a rubber nose is not as easy as it looks. If you want to be a clown, you need to spend a lot of time in baggy pants.

Phillip knew that if he wanted to sue B.B., it was not going to be easy. He would have to spend a lot of time in the law library. Sam would supervise, but Phillip was to get the papers ready. He found a book about drafting a complaint—the paper that tells a person why you’re suing them. The back of the book had fill-in-the-blank forms. Phillip found a form for assault and battery and made a photocopy using his lunch money. He filled in the blank spaces.

Where it said
plaintiff
, he put his name. Where it said
defendant
, he put B.B. Tyson. In the section for what the lawsuit was about, he wrote about his glasses getting broken. For damages, he wrote:
The cost of replacing my glasses because it wasn’t Aunt Veola’s fault
.

“What are you doing?” asked the librarian, Mr. Chang, who was suddenly looking over his shoulder.

“Nothing,” said Phillip, flipping his notepad upside down to cover the complaint.

“You’re up to something,” Mr. Chang said. He reached over and picked up the notepad.

“It’s just a lawsuit,” Phillip said as he tried to grab it back.

“
Stanislaw versus Tyson
,” said Mr. Chang. He read the complaint out loud. “Suing the school bully,” he observed. “You are either the bravest kid in school or the most stupid.”

Phillip shrugged.

“I give you credit. You got guts, kid. Wish I’d thought of it when I was your age.” He tossed the complaint back on the table. “Too bad you’re wasting your time.”

“What do you mean?” Phillip asked.

“I mean,” said Mr. Chang, “even if you win, what stops B.B. from doing the same thing next week?”

“I don’t know,” said Phillip. He hadn’t thought about it. Even if he did win his lawsuit and got B.B. to pay for his glasses, it wouldn’t stop her from hitting him again.

“What should I do?” asked Phillip.

“Have you heard of the twisted-shoulder block?” asked Mr. Chang. “The shoulder absorbs most of the impact, and you can protect your eyeglasses better.” He gave Phillip a pat on the back, wished him good luck, and went back in his cubicle.

Phillip wrestled with what he had said. After lunch he asked Sam about it.

“The only way you could stop it from happening again,” said Sam, “is if you got an injunction.”

“A what?”

“An injunction,” Sam explained, “is like, when your mother yells, ‘
Knock it off or else!!!
’ In a lawsuit, when someone is doing something they’re not supposed to do and they keep doing it, the judge can issue an order that says, ‘Knock it off or else.’”

“So the judge could order B.B. not to hit me anymore?”

“That’s right.”

“What about the other kids? Could the judge order them all to stop hitting each other?”

“It’s possible,” agreed Sam. “But the judge would be ordering an end to school dodgeball. To get a judge to do that, you would need good legal reasoning and plenty of case law on your side.”

“I better get back to the library,” said Phillip.

Two hours later, he was two hours older and still hadn’t a clue as to how he could get a judge to issue an injunction against dodgeball. Phillip wondered how he could have expected to figure all this legal stuff out.

Sheer will was not enough. It was like when Helena took Einstein to the racetrack and tried to train him to race. The elephant lumbered away, always keeping three feet on the ground, while animals with shorter legs easily passed him.

Phillip needed to get away from the musty smell of old books. He left the library and went to the lawyers’ lounge, where he found a copy of
Dodgeball Today
magazine on a couch. The lead article was “How to Get More Force on a Screamer Ball Without Making It Explode.” Phillip placed the magazine in a rack on the wall. Then he curled up on the couch and fell into a troubled sleep. His nap was interrupted by the chatter of lawyers coming into the lounge. Phillip ignored them and pretended he was asleep.

“Someone beat you to the couch, Syd,” a lawyer with a squeaky voice said.

“Looks like Veola’s nephew,” said a deeper voice. “Almost got himself killed the other day dancing with a bookcase. Fool kid.”

“Seems to me,” a more soft-spoken voice said, “if you’re going to make a bookcase, you ought to make it so it doesn’t tip over.”

“There he goes,” said Deep Voice. “Thinking like a plaintiff’s lawyer.”

“Yeah,” said Squeaky Voice. “I’m surprised you didn’t pass the kid your business card.”

“Go ahead and laugh,” said Soft Spoken. “There’s a lawsuit in that bookcase-falling-over mishap. In my opinion, that bookcase was an unreasonably unsafe product.”

“No,” said Deep Voice, “a product isn’t unreasonably unsafe unless it’s unsafe for the purpose for which it was made. If you get hurt using a bookcase as a bookcase, it’s unreasonably unsafe. If you get hurt using a bookcase as a ladder, you’re a fool kid.”

The lawyers laughed, but Phillip was thinking about an “unreasonably unsafe product.” Wasn’t a dodgeball a product? And wasn’t the purpose of a dodgeball to hit other kids with? And wasn’t it unsafe to hit kids with a dodgeball? Phillip bolted upright.

“Excuse me,” he said to the lawyers. He got to his feet and returned to the library.

By the end of the next day, Phillip added a new paragraph to his complaint. It said that a dodgeball was an unreasonably unsafe product, and the judge should issue an injunction to stop the school from forcing kids to play.

Phillip wasn’t sure whom to sue about dodgeball being unsafe. He didn’t think it was B.B.’s fault. It was Coach and the school that made him play. Since Phillip wanted to be fair, he wrote
Hardingtown Middle School
and
Coach Tyson
next to B.B.’s name as defendants. Then, as a last-minute
thought, he added
the American Dodgeball Company
and
the City of Hardingtown
.

Now it was poop-scooping, rope-climbing, broken-glasses sixth-grader Phillip Edward “Coleslaw” Stanislaw (a.k.a. “circus boy”) against the Unofficial Dodgeball Capital of the World.