either in discovery or at trial. An important part of his job was maintaining a network of expert witnesses-hired guns willing to take the stand for huge fees. Dr. Bannister was a professional testifier with a thick resume and a fondness for mixing it up with hotshot lawyers in big trials. The fact that he was now backing down seemed fatal. – T he second blow landed an hour later with Jerry already on the ropes and bleeding. A young partner named Carlton arrived with a thick report and some grim news. “Things are not going well, Jerry,” he began.
“I know.”
Carlton was supervising the screening of thousands of potential clients, and his thick report was filled with terrible numbers. “We’re not seeing the damage, Jerry. Ten thousand exams so far, and the results are not impressive. Maybe 10 percent have some loss of aortic pressure, but nothing to get excited about. We’re seeing all sorts of heart disease, hypertension, clogged arteries, and the like, but nothing we can link to the drug.”
“Ten million bucks on screenings and we have nothing?” Jerry said, thumbs on temples, eyes closed.
“At least ten million, and, yes, we have nothing. I hate to say this, Jerry, but this drug looks harmless. I think we’re drilling a dry hole here. I’d say we cut and run.”
“I didn’t ask for advice.”
“No, you didn’t.” Carlton left the office and closed the door. Jerry locked it and went to a sofa where he stretched out and stared at the ceiling. He had been there before-caught with a drug that wasn’t quite as bad as he had claimed it to be. There was still a chance Varrick was a step or two behind. Perhaps the company didn’t know what Jerry now knew. With all the settlement buzz, its share price had moved steadily up, closing the Friday before at $34.50. Maybe, just maybe, the company could be bluffed into an even quicker settlement. He had seen it before. A company with plenty of cash and a ton of bad press wants the lawsuits and lawyers to simply go away.
As the minutes passed, he managed to relax. He couldn’t think of all the Wally Figgs out there-they were big boys who had made their own decisions to file suit. And he couldn’t think of all the clients who were expecting a sizable check, and soon. Nor was he too concerned with saving face-he was obscenely rich, and the money had long since toughened his skin.
What Jerry was really thinking about was the next drug, the one after Krayoxx.
T he third blow, and the knockout punch, arrived in a scheduled 3:00 p.m. phone conference with another member of the Plaintiffs’ Litigation Committee (PLC). Rodney Berman was a flamboyant New Orleans trial lawyer who had made and lost several fortunes gambling with juries. Thanks to an oil spill in the Gulf, he was currently in the money and had managed to piece together even more Krayoxx clients than Zell amp; Potter.
“We’re up shit creek,” he began pleasantly.
“It’s been a bad day, Rodney, so go ahead and make it worse.”
“Inside scoop from a very confidential, and very well-paid, I might add, spook who has laid eyes on a preliminary report headed for the New England Journal of Medicine next month. Researchers at Harvard and Cleveland Clinic will declare that our beloved Krayoxx is as healthy as wheat germ and causes no problems whatsoever. No increased risk of heart attack or stroke. No damage to the aortic valve. Nothing. And these boys have resumes that make our guys look like witch doctors. My experts are running for the hills. My lawyers are hiding under their desks. According to one of our lobbyists, the FDA is considering putting the drug back on the market. Varrick is dropping cash all over Washington. What else do you want to hear, Jerry?”
“I think I’ve heard enough. I’m looking for a bridge.”
“I can see one from my office,” Rodney said, somehow managing a laugh. “It’s beautiful, spanning the Mississippi and just waiting on me. The Rodney Berman Memorial Bridge. They’d find me in the Gulf one day, covered in crude oil.”
Four hours later, all six of the PLC members were linked into a conference call Jerry organized from his office. After he summarized the grim news of the day, Berman delivered his version. Each of the six took a turn, and there was not a single piece of good news. The litigation was crumbling on all fronts, on all theories, from coast to coast. There was a lengthy debate over how much Varrick knew at the moment, and the general feeling was that they, the lawyers, were far ahead of the company. But that would change quickly.
They agreed to stop the screening immediately. Jerry volunteered to contact Nicholas Walker at Varrick and attempt to speed up settlement talks. Each of the six agreed to begin buying huge chunks of Varrick common stock in an effort to drive up the price. It was a public corporation, after all, and its share price meant everything. If Varrick believed a settlement would soothe Wall Street, it might decide to get rid of its Krayoxx mess, however harmless the drug might be.
The conference call lasted two hours and ended with a tone that was slightly more optimistic than when it began. They would continue pushing hard for a few more days, maintain their poker faces, play the game, and hope for a miracle, but under no circumstances would they continue spending money on their own Krayoxx mess. It was over; they would cut their losses and move on to the next battle.
Almost nothing was said about the Klopeck trial six weeks away.
CHAPTER 33
Two days later, Jerry Alisandros made a seemingly routine phone call to Nicholas Walker at Varrick Labs. They went through the weather and some football, then Jerry got around to business. “I’m in your neck of the woods next week, Nick, and I’d like to stop by for a meeting, if you’re in and have the time.”
“Maybe,” Walker said cautiously.
“Our numbers are coming together nicely and we’ve made progress, at least on the death cases. I’ve spent hours with the PLC and we’re ready to enter into a formal settlement agreement, round one, of course. Let’s get the big cases out of the way and then slog through the small ones.”
“That’s our plan, Jerry,” Walker said, in full agreement, and Jerry finally managed to breathe. “I’m taking heat from Reuben Massey to get this stuff out of the way. He chewed me for breakfast this morning and I was planning to call you. Massey has instructed me to get down there with our in-house team and our Florida firms and hammer out a settlement along the same lines as what we have already discussed. I suggest we meet in Fort Lauderdale a week from today, sign the agreement, present it to the judge, and move on. The non-death cases will take longer, but let’s get the big ones closed. Agreed?”
Agreed? You have no idea, Jerry thought. “A great idea, Nick. I’ll set it up down here.”
“But I insist that all six PLC members be in the room.”
“I can arrange that, no problem.”
“And can we get a magistrate or someone from the judge’s office to be present? I’m not leaving there until we have a deal, in writing and approved by the court.”
“Excellent idea, Nick.” Jerry was grinning like an idiot.
“Let’s get it done.”
After the call, Jerry checked the market. Varrick was trading at $36, and the only plausible reason for its uptick was the good spin about the settlement.
T he phone conversation had been recorded by a company specializing in truth and deception. It was a firm Zell amp; Potter used frequently to secretly record conversations in an effort to determine the level of veracity on the other end. Thirty minutes after Jerry hung up, two experts entered his office with some graphs and charts. They had camped out in a small conference room down the hall with their staff and machines. They had measured the stress of both voices and had easily determined that both men were lying. Jerry’s lies had been planned, of course, in an effort to prompt Walker.
Walker’s voice-stress analysis showed a high level of deception. When he spoke of Reuben Massey and the company’s desire to get rid of the litigation, he was telling the truth. But when he spoke of the big plans for a settlement summit next week in Fort Lauderdale, he was clearly being deceptive.
Jerry gave the impression of taking the news in stride. Such evidence was never admissible in court because it was so wildly unreliable. He had often asked himself why he even bothered with voice-stress analysis, but after using it for years, he almost believed it. Anything to give him a slight edge. Such recordings were highly unethical anyway, and even illegal in some states, so it was easy to bury the information.
For most of the past fifteen years, he had kept Varrick on the run with one lawsuit after another. And in