Gray Mountain: A Novel(33)

“It’s in the war room. Come with me.” He jumped to his feet and she followed him down a short hallway to a long, windowless room. At one end of a cluttered table were two plastic carryout containers and two bottles of water. He pointed and said, “Lunch is served.”

Samantha walked to a side wall and stared at an enlarged photo that was at least eight feet tall. It was in color, and it portrayed a scene that was shocking and tragic. A massive boulder, the size of a small car, had crashed through a mobile home, shearing it in half and causing serious damage. “What’s this?” she asked.

Donovan stepped beside her and said, “Well, it’s a lawsuit, to begin with. For about a million years, that boulder was part of Enid Mountain, about forty miles from here, over in Hopper County. A couple of years ago, they began strip-mining the mountain, blew its top off, and dug out the coal. On March 14 of last year, at four in the morning, a bulldozer owned and operated by a roguish outfit called Strayhorn Coal was clearing rock, without a permit, and this boulder was shoved into the fill area down the valley. Because of its size, it picked up momentum as it descended along this steep creek bed.” He was pointing to an enlarged map next to the photo. “Almost a mile from where it left the blade of the bulldozer, it crashed into this little trailer. In the back bedroom were two brothers, Eddie Tate, age eleven, and Brandon Tate, age eight. Sound asleep, as you might expect. Their father was in prison for cooking meth. Their mother was at work at a convenience store. The boys were killed instantly, crushed, flattened.”

Samantha gawked at the photo in disbelief. “That’s horrible.”

“Indeed it was, and is. Life near a strip mine is never dull. The ground shakes and cracks foundations. Coal dust fills the air and blankets everything. The well water turns orange. Rocks fly all the time. I had a case two years ago in West Virginia where a Mr. and Mrs. Herzog were sitting by their small pool on a warm Saturday afternoon and a one-ton boulder came from nowhere and landed square in the middle of the pool. They got drenched. The pool cracked. We sued the company and got a few bucks, but not much.”

“And you’ve sued Strayhorn Coal?”

“Oh, yes. We go to trial next Monday in Colton, Circuit Court.”

“The company won’t settle?”

“The company was fined by our fearless regulators. Hit ’em hard for twenty thousand bucks, which they have appealed. No, they won’t settle. They, along with their insurance company, have offered a hundred thousand.”

“A hundred thousand dollars for two dead kids?”

“Dead kids are not worth much, especially in Appalachia. They have no economic value because they, obviously, are not employed. It’s a great case for punitive damages—Strayhorn Coal is capitalized at half a billion dollars—and I’ll ask for a million or two. But the wise people who make the laws in Virginia decided years ago to cap punitive damages.”

“I think I remember this from the bar exam.”

“The cap is $350,000, regardless of how bad the defendant acted. It was a gift from our General Assembly to the insurance industry, like all caps.”

“You sound like my father.”

“You want to eat or stand here for the next hour.”

“I’m not sure I’m hungry.”

“Well, I am.” They sat at the table and unwrapped their sandwiches. Samantha took a small bite but had no appetite. “Have you tried to settle the case?” she asked.

“I put a million on the table, they countered with a hundred thousand, so we’re miles apart. They, the insurance lawyers along with the coal company, are banking on the fact that the family was screwed up and not that close. They’re also banking on the fact that a lot of jurors in these parts are either afraid of Big Coal or quietly supportive of it. When you sue a coal company in Appalachia you can’t always count on an unbiased jury. Even those who despise the companies tend to stay quiet about it. Everybody has a relative or a friend who’s got a job. It makes for some interesting dynamics in the courtroom.”

Samantha tried another small bite and looked around the room. The walls were covered with enlarged color photos and maps, some marked as trial exhibits, others apparently waiting for trial. She said, “This reminds me of my father’s office, once upon a time.”

“Marshall Kofer. I checked him out. He was quite the trial lawyer in his day.”

“Yes, he was. When I was a kid, if I wanted to see him I usually had to go to his office, if he was in town. He worked nonstop. Ran a big firm. When he wasn’t jetting around the world chasing the latest aviation disaster, he was in his office preparing for trial. They had this large, cluttered room—come to think of it, they called it the war room.”

“I didn’t invent the term. Most trial lawyers have one.”

“And the walls were covered with large photos and diagrams and all sorts of exhibits. It was impressive, even to a kid. I can still feel the tension, the anxiety in the room as he and his staff got ready for the courtroom. These were big crashes, with lots of dead people, lots of lawyers and all. He explained later that most of his cases were settled right before trial. Liability was seldom an issue. The plane went down, it wasn’t the fault of the passengers. The airlines have plenty of money and insurance, and they worry about their image, so they settle. For huge sums.”