Off Limits(69)

I sat down next to my client and watched the jury. These civil cases are the riskiest part of my job, but also the part I looked forward to the most. First off, if anyone can afford to hire a lawyer of my caliber, it means that they’ve already got a lot of money. I don’t come cheap, and that right off the bat loses you a lot of sympathy points with any jury.

You must understand that nowadays, most juries are made up of people who fall into one of three categories. You have the people who are too broke, either retirees or unemployed people, that are more interested in getting the pitiful jury duty stipend along with the fact that the court will pay for lunch if the trial goes on long enough. The second group are the ones who are too lazy, as in they can’t even bother to come up with a decent enough excuse to get out of jury duty. The final group are the ones deemed too unimportant by the court to be dismissed. Let’s face it, if your job is running the register down at the local supermarket, the court isn’t going to buy an argument that you are so indispensable to your job as to make jury duty onerous.

In a case like Greg Maxwell vs. Bryan Talmadge, I’d have loved to have a trial filled with female millionaire entrepreneurs who also happened to love basketball and were all mothers with kids in college. Instead, I had three retirees, two stay-at-home moms whose kids were in elementary school, four men whose jobs meant they couldn’t even pay my client’s income taxes, and three unemployed people. Eight men, four women. Men were harder to convince in these cases than women, who tend to have a greater sense of fairness than their testicle-bearing counterparts. And, not to put too fine a point on it, my looks helped me sway female jurors to my side more often than not.

“Thanks, Kade,” Greg whispered to me as I sat down. I was tempted to tell him that since he was paying me a lot of money, not just for this case, but also in regards to being his legal agent, I didn’t deserve his thanks. Besides that, part of me agreed with the defense. Greg hadn’t understood the risks involved with the investment, not so much because Talmadge had totally misrepresented them, but because Greg Maxwell was a four-time NBA All-Star who had the reading comprehension level of a ten-year-old kid whose favorite reading material probably consisted of X-Men comic books.

However, specifically because Greg paid me well over two hundred thousand dollars a year, a flat percentage of his contract and a cut of his endorsement contracts that I negotiated on his behalf, I avoided saying anything that would annoy him. Instead, I waited while the defense got their lasties, as is tradition in American court cases, and the jury filed out. I had a good feeling that we’d win, but I’ve been in the law game long enough to know that in civil cases, you’re often better off just taking your money to Vegas instead.



* * *



“So what’s going on, Dad?” I was back at the office, listening as my Dad talked. I love my Dad a lot, he’s a great guy, but he does have the tendency to ramble on and on without getting to the point.

“I just wanted to see how your case went, son,” Dad replied. Like me, Derek Prescott was a lawyer, a named partner in a big firm out in Los Angeles that specialized in real estate and admiralty law. He had tended more toward community outreach in the last decade, however, and I suspected that he was trying to buff his image toward making a turn to politics. Dad had always been a bit of a crusader, if you know what I mean.

“We got the win, Dad. Maxwell’s happy, the jury gave us about ninety percent of what we wanted. I was able to convince him that it was a good win, and the defense isn’t looking at appealing.”

“They never do against you, my boy,” Dad replied. It was one of the best things about him. I knew a few other lawyers whose fathers were also in the legal profession, and each of them had anticipated their child going into the family firm. It caused a lot of friction if they didn’t.

Dad, on the other hand, was a self-made millionaire whose father had been a high school chemistry teacher. He knew that going out on your own and making your own path made you a stronger person, so when I told him coming out of Stanford Law that I wanted to hang out my own shingle and that I was moving to Portland to boot, he hadn’t batted an eye. He supported me without a moment’s hesitation.

Now, we still talked two or three times a week, sometimes about work, sometimes not. “Thanks, Dad. But I doubt you called me just because you wanted to see how my case went. That may have flown a year or so ago, but I’ve been in court enough since then that I think you don’t have the nervous jitters for me any longer.”

Dad chuckled and I could hear the acceptance in his voice. “You’re right, of course. That’s what makes you so damn good of a lawyer, Kade. Actually, I wanted to call to see if you’re free next week? It’s my anniversary with Layla, and I was kind of hoping we could all get together to celebrate.”

I thought about it, then smiled. It’d been a long time since I’d been down to Los Angeles, too long in fact. “That sounds great, Dad. But, only on one condition.”

“Sure, what’s that?”

“You take Layla out for at least one night of just the two of you. I’m not letting you turn your anniversary into a family trip to Disneyland just because you want to ride Space Mountain.”

“Hey there, buddy, oldest ride, longest line,” Dad quipped. “But yes, I promise. Just the four of us, and I was going to have a family weekend before taking Layla up to Big Sur for the actual anniversary week.”