of malice into our midst?”
I never did better than Cs in math, but I know when a lawyer is asking for five million bucks from a jury. Meaning H. T. Patterson hoped for two million, and I was beginning to wonder if taking this case to trial was so damn smart after all.
“A letter of apology, a front-page retraction, and fifty grand might do it,” I told the publisher six months earlier in his bayfront office.
Symington Foote bristled. “We don’t pay extortion. A public official is fair game, and we had a bona fide tip that Wolf was taking dirty money.”
“From a tipster who refuses to come forward and a reporter who won’t even reveal his source,” I reminded the publisher, trying to knock him off the soapbox.
“But we don’t need to prove the story was true, do we, counselor?”
He had me there. As a public official, Nick Wolf could win his libel suit only if he proved that the newspaper knew the story was false or had recklessly disregarded the truth. A nice concept for judges. For jurors, it’s the same as in most lawsuits. If they like the plaintiff’s attitude and appearance more than the defendant’s, the plaintiff wins. Simple as that.
The case had been cleanly tried. A few histrionics from Patterson, but his tricks were mostly subtle. When I stood to make an objection, he would move close, letting me tower above him. He was a bantam rooster in a white linen three-piece suit, and alongside was a bruiser representing the unrestrained power of a billion-dollar company.
So here I was about to deliver my closing argument in the big barn of a courtroom on the sixth floor of the Dade County Courthouse, an aging tower of gray limestone where buzzards of the winged variety soar overhead and the seersuckered birds beat their wings inside. Heavy drapes matted with dust covered the grimy windows. The walnut paneling had darkened over the decades, and an obsolete air-conditioning system rumbled noisily overhead.
Several years ago the electorate was asked to approve many millions of dollars in bonds for capital projects around the county. The voters said yea to a new zoo and nay to a new courthouse, expressing greater regard for the animals of the jungle than for the animals of Flagler Street. And who could blame them?
Now I stood and approached the jury box, all six-two, two-hundred-something pounds of me. I tried not to get too close, avoiding the jurors’ horizontal space. I shot a glance at the familiar sign on the wall above the judge’s bench: WE WHO LABOR HERE ONLY SEEK THE TRUTH. There ought to be a footnote: subject to the truth being misstated by perjurious witnesses, obfuscated by sleazy lawyers, excluded by inept judges, and overlooked by lazy jurors.
Planting myself like an oak in front of the jury, I surveyed the courtroom. Symington Foote sat at the defense table next to the chair I had just abandoned. The publisher fingered his gold cuff links and eyed me skeptically. Behind him in the row of imitation leather chairs just in front of the bar were two representatives of the newspaper’s libel insurance company. Both men wore charcoal-gray three-piece suits. They flew in from Kansas City for the trial and had that corn-fed, pale-faced, short-haired, tight-assed look of insurance adjusters everywhere. I wouldn’t have a drink with either one of them if stroking the client’s pocketbook wasn’t part of my job. In the front row of the gallery sat three senior partners of Harman and Fox, awaiting my performance with anxiety that approached hysteria. They were more nervous than I was, and I’m prone to both nausea and diarrhea just before closing argument. Neither Mr. Harman nor Mr. Fox was there, the former having died of a stroke in a Havana brothel in 1952, the latter living out his golden years in a Palm Beach estate-Chateau Renard-with his sixth wife, a twenty- three-year-old beautician from Barbados. We were an old-line law firm by Miami standards, our forebears having represented the railroads, phosphate manufacturers, citrus growers, and assorted other robber barons and swindlers from Florida’s checkered past. These days we carried the banner of the First Amendment, a load lightened considerably by our enormous retainer and hefty hourly rates.
Much like a railroad, a newspaper is a glorious client because of the destruction it can inflict. Newspaper trucks crush pedestrians in the early-morning darkness; obsolete presses mangle workmen’s limbs; and the news accounts themselves-the paper’s very raison d’etre, as H. T. Patterson had just put it in a lyrical moment-can poison as surely as the deadliest drug. All of it, fodder for the law firm. So the gallery was also filled with an impressive collection of downtown hired guns squirming in their seats with the fond hope that the jury would tack seven digits onto the verdict form and leave The Miami Journal looking for new counsel. When I analyzed it, my only true friend inside the hall of alleged justice was Marvin the Maven, and he couldn’t help me now.
I began the usual way, thanking the jurors, stopping just short of slobbering my gratitude for their rapt attention. I didn’t point out that number two had slept through the second day and that number six was more interested in what he dug out of his nose than the exhibits marked into evidence. Then after the brief commercial for the flag, the judge, and our gosh-darned best-in-the-world legal system, I paused to let them know that the important stuff was coming right up. Summoning the deep voice calculated to keep them still, I began explaining constitutional niceties as six men and women stared back at me with suspicion and enmity.
“Yes, it is true that the Journal did not offer testimony by the main source of its story. And it is true that there can be many explanations for the receipt of cash contributions and many reasons why State Attorney Wolf chose to drop charges against three men considered major drug dealers by the DEA. But Judge Witherspoon will instruct you on the law of libel and the burden of the plaintiff in such a case. And he will tell you that the law gives the Journal the right to be wrong…”
I caught a glimpse of Nick Wolf, giving me that tough-guy smile. He was a smart enough lawyer in his own right to know I had no ammunition and was floundering.
“And as for damages,” I told the jury, “you have just heard some outrageous sums thrown about by Mr. Patterson. In this very courtroom, at that very plaintiff’s table, there have sat persons horribly maimed and disfigured, there have sat others defrauded of huge sums of money, but look at the plaintiff here…”
They did, and he looked back with his politician’s grin. Nick Wolf filled his chair and then some. All chest and shoulders. One of those guys who worked slinging bags of cement or chopping trees as a kid, and with the good genes, the bulk stayed hard and his rahma-bull neck would strain against shirt collars for the rest of his life. On television, with the camera focused on a head shot, all you remembered was that neck.
“Has he been physically injured? No. Has he lost a dime because of this story? No. Has he even lost a moment’s sleep? No. So even if you find the Journal liable…”
H. T. Patterson still had rebuttal, and I wondered if he would use the line from Ecclesiastes about a man’s good name being more valuable than precious ointment or the one from Othello about reputation as the immortal part of self.
He used them both.
Then threw in one from Richard II I’d never heard.
“You could have advised us to settle,” Symington Foote said, standing on the courthouse steps, squinting into the low, vicious late-afternoon sun.
Funny, I thought I had.
“Three hundred twenty-two thousand,” I said. “Could have been worse.”
“Where the hell did that number come from? Where do these jurors get their-”
“Probably a quotient verdict. Someone wanted to give him a million, someone else only a hundred thousand. They put the numbers on slips of paper, add ’em up, and divide by six. They’re not supposed to do it, but it happens.”
Foote sniffed the air, didn’t like what he smelled, and snorted. “Maybe it’s time for a hard look at the jury system. I’ll talk to the editorial writers in the morning.”
He stomped off without telling me how much he looked forward to using my services in the future.
CHAPTER 2
