window and the door. On top of the room, a videographer is getting his camera ready to record the whole mess for the boys at corporate who couldn't make the live show. At the bottom, a table runs the width of the window. Seated at the table are two jury consultants with laptop computers and stacks of questionnaires.
What the two jury consultants also have is a monitor that's hooked up to each of twelve ProCon machines on the desk of each 'juror.'
The ProCon machines are simple little devices that measure how the juror is 'feeling' — generally pro or vaguely con — at any given moment. It's basically a joystick attached to a base and the juror is supposed to keep his or her hand on it at all times. The juror's feeling con about something, he pushes the joystick down. A little con, a little down. A lot con, a lot down. Same with the pro feelings. A little pro, the juror pulls a little back on the joystick, a lot pro, she can whip that puppy all the way back.
It's basically a high-tech version of the old Roman thumbs-up/thumbs-down gladiator deal.
What it does is it allows you to instantly measure the jury's ongoing 'instinctive' reaction on a scale from Negative 10 to Neutral to Positive 10 to any witness, question, or answer. They're carefully instructed that they don't need a reason for their reaction — they should just react. If they're feeling 'bad' they should push the stick down. If they're feeling happy, they should push it up.
Jack knows this is only for the gut reaction, that they'll get the rational response from the questionnaires and the actual decision from a 'verdict,' but he also knows that the jury will rationalize its gut reaction onto the questionnaire and then onto the verdict.
Doesn't matter what a lawyer or a judge says; any jury will decide a case on its gut reaction.
So the ProCon machine is an important little fucker in this proceeding.
Everyone in the observation room is going to have their eyes on the ProCon monitor.
Not inside the actual 'courtroom.'
Inside the actual focus group room, on the other side of the window, the 'jurors' are seated in a mock jury box, with individual little tables for their ProCon joysticks. There's a witness stand, tables for the plaintiff and defense, and a judge's bench, where the 'rent-a-judge' for the focus group will sit.
The two jury consultants — a yuppie guy and a yuppie gal — and the moderator — a slightly older male yuppie — are all from TSI, Trial Science Inc., and this is what they do for a living. They're all a little frantic at the moment because this is a rush job. They've spent the afternoon assembling a demographically correct focus group that would be an accurate sampling of a potential Orange County jury. Age, gender, race, education, profession have gone into the mix, plus they had to figure in the attorney's preference.
'How do you want this one to come out?' the older yuppie had asked Casey.
Because the attorney is the one they have to keep happy, so they need to know if the attorney wants a real focus group or a dog-and-pony. A lot of times, the attorney is trying to use the focus group to persuade a client to settle or to go to trial, and because the TSI people already know the demographics that tend to be pro-defense or pro-plaintiff, they can slant their recruiting the lawyer's way.
They can also slant the questionnaires and the live discussion, and while they can't guarantee an outcome, they can take a lawyer a long way down his or her chosen path.
Hence the question, 'How do you want this one to come out?'
'Accurately,' Casey answered.
One, because he's not about to set up a Potemkin village for old friends like Billy Hayes and Jack Wade, and two, he already knows how this one's going to come out anyway.
He's going to kick their ass.
Which is what Jack thinks, too, when he sees the rent-a-judge walk in and take the bench. Dude is wearing black robes, just like this is the real thing.
Dude also looks very familiar.
'We're dead,' Jack mutters to Goddamn Billy. Because the rent-a-judge is none other than retired Justice Dennis Mallon.
From the Atlas Warehouse trial.
86
Mallon bangs on a gavel, which gets the expected chuckle from the group, and he asks them to finish filling out their 'pre-stimulus questionnaires,' and then he tells them that they're going to hear about a lawsuit involving a fire.
'You'll hear a brief statement from the plaintiff, then one from the defense. Then you'll be asked to fill out a questionnaire based on what you've heard. Then you're going to hear testimony from a witness for the defense, who will be examined and then cross-examined. After which you'll fill out, yes, another questionnaire, and then you'll discuss the case just as you would if you were on a real jury. Then I'll ask you to render a verdict for the defense or for the plaintiff, and if for the plaintiff, how much you would award. I encourage you to take notes; just please be aware that your notes will be collected at the end of the evening.
'During all of this, please manipulate your little ProCon joysticks so the people in the observation room know how you're feeling.'
Which gets another appreciative chuckle from the jury.
'Can you believe,' Jack whispers to Goddamn Billy, 'that with all the law, all the science, everything we do on a file, that a multimillion-dollar decision is going to be made by twelve people who show up for fifty bucks each and all the cookies they can eat?'
'I can believe anything,' Billy says.
'Sorry you got dragged into this,' Jack says.
'You didn't drag me,' Billy says. 'I walked.'
Casey gets up from the plaintiff's table, looks at the jury for a few moments and says, 'This is a story about how a gigantic insurance company, let's call it Great Western Insurance, cheated a policyholder. How it lied, cheated, bullied, and oppressed a man who had lost his wife and his home.'
Jack looks up at the monitor.
Negative 10.
'How,' Casey says, 'Great Western Insurance took his premium money for years, assuring him that in his time of need they would be there for him — and then when that time came, when tragedy struck, instead of being there for him, accused him of fraud, arson, and murder and denied him the millions of dollars in benefits that he is due.
'This is a story about how a big corporation thinks that it's above the law, because even though the authorities declared that the fire was accidental, and the coroner said the death was accidental, and even though the police have not even investigated, let alone charged, let alone convicted my client of arson or murder, Great Western Insurance accused him of burning his house down and murdering his wife, and convicted him of the crimes of arson and murder without even the benefit of a hearing, let alone a public trial.'
Negative 10s across the board.
'And this is a story about a man, an individual, my client — we'll call him Mr. White — who came as an immigrant to this country with only an old suitcase and the clothes on his back. Who through hard work and application and diligence lived the American Dream. Became a millionaire and fulfilled his dream, a dream that is now shattered by a sudden accident, and the deliberate, malicious, and oppressive actions of a greedy, powerful corporation that would rather slander a good man and destroy his life than pay what it owes.
'My client's only hope to restore what's left of his life is you. His wife is gone, his children bereaved, his house lies in ashes. You cannot bring back his wife, you cannot comfort his small children, but you can restore to him his home and property and punish the large and callous corporation that, perhaps even more than the fire, has destroyed my client's life. You can rebuild a home for him and his children to live in. You can send a message to the boardroom of Great Western Insurance that they must never, ever engage in this kind of despicable behavior again.
'My client rests his fate in your hands.
'I know that you will see the truth for what it is and act on that truth. Thank you.'
