rules of discovery, I could see it first.
“What’s the relevance of this?” I asked, as the interviewer was telling us Tupton’s background.
“Two weeks before his tragic death, Peter Tupton gave this interview. I hanks to the wonders of modern technology, we can show the jury that this was a man. Yea, more than a man, a towering figure of vision, courage, and honor.”
“I’d like to listen to your client before you canonize him,” I said.
I watched for a few minutes. The towering figure appeared to be a short, overweight man in his late thirties with receding pale hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and thin, grim lips. He wore a safari jacket over a blue chambray shirt. The pants were khaki, and when he crossed his legs, I could see one hiking boot stained with mud. I quickly learned that Tupton had studied petroleum engineering at a university out West, that his first job had been with an oil company, and after an explosion and fire on an offshore rig, he had been so shocked by the ecological destruction that he had quit. Tupton didn’t say anything about the men who had been killed, but the loss of fish and birds really seemed to frost his buns. He went back to school, picked up a master’s degree, and became involved in environmental protection, first with the government, later with the Everglades Society.
The interviewer asked about the history of the Everglades, and Tupton used its Indian name, Pa-hay-okee, grassy water, a reference to the tooth-edged saw grass in the shallow, vast stream. He talked about the diversity of the Glades, the shallow sloughs and gator holes, shell-filled beaches and tangled mangroves. He decried development, claiming it had caused the drought, turning parts of the Glades into a prairie. He talked about the ecosystems, pine rock-lands, mangrove swamps, hardwood hammocks, bay heads, and cypress heads. He bemoaned the sugarcane fields, sucking up nutrients from the saw-grass peat that accumulated over thousands of years. He criticized the man-made irrigation channels that artificially restrict the natural cycle of dry winters and flooded summers.
On the screen, a file videotape showed a variety of animals in their natural habitat, and Tupton gave a voice-over narration in a calm, measured voice. He described the endangered species in the Glades, and we looked at crocodiles and turtles, manatees and panthers, a bald eagle, a wood stork, a pair of snail kites, and a peregrine falcon.
“We must keep ever vigilant,” Peter Tupton said. He radiated sincerity, seriousness of purpose. “When there are threats to the environment, we must respond with protests, lawsuits, political pressure, every tool at our disposal.”
The interviewer asked, “Aren’t people much more aware of the environment these days?”
Tupton nodded. “Twenty-five years ago, some so-called regional planners proposed building a huge jetport in the Big Cypress Swamp smack in the Glades. They publicly announced that entire cities would be built around the jetport, as if that was something to be proud of. Before anyone knew what was going on, they dredged and even built a trial runway. That’s how close it came before the public rose up and shut it all down. Now there’s a local developer who wants to build a town out there.”
Next to me H.T. Patterson chuckled. I listened some more.
In the space of thirty minutes, interspersed with public-service spots and commercials for every Jim Nabors record ever made, Tupton told everything I wanted to know about the Everglades, and then some. I concluded that the judge would allow the tape into evidence and that the jury would like Peter Tupton.
Maybe not like so much as respect. Patterson knew what he was doing. Wrongful-death cases with a surviving widow involve two kinds of plaintiffs. The regular guy- No, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this was not a special man. This was not an extraordinary man. ‘This man was not an Eagle Scout or a high public official. He packed bags at the Piggly Wiggly, but he was someone special to his wife, because this was the one man in the world who had fallen in love with her, who had spent his life with her, who had shared her joys and her sorrows all these many years…
That kind of case was tough enough to defend, but Patterson was going after something else. The special person- Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this was a special man, a man who made a difference in our lives. While we went about our daily chores, oblivious to our surroundings, he was there fighting the good fight to assure we have water to drink, to bathe our children, to wash our cars. He fought to make sure our grandchildren can enjoy the majesty of the southern bald eagle. This was a man who was our keeper of the lighthouse. He kept a watch out for us all. He was a special man…
Oh, my, how H.T. Patterson could play this one.
Now, barely ten minutes into the deposition, we were hung up on the issue of the plaintiff’s right to details of the defendant’s financial condition. “If you persist in your mulish intractability,” Patterson announced, “we shall forthwith and with due dispatch move to amend the complaint and add a claim for punitive damages. Thereupon, the issue of the defendant’s net worth is relevant, admissible, and if I may say so, quite instructive to the jury in assessing damages.”
He was doing his best to intimidate Nicky, trying to convince him that the discovery process would be so burdensome and invasive of his privacy that he should settle the case. Trouble was, Nicky Florio didn’t intimidate easily.
I was about to make my objection when Florio spoke up: “You guys can keep on yapping and running up the bills, if you want. I don’t give a shit. I’m not gonna answer questions about my finances to you, the judge, or even my beautiful wife.”
Across the conference table, Gina giggled.
I put my hand on Florio’s arm to hush him up. Refusing to answer questions sometimes backfires. Once, in a divorce case, I asked a flagrantly unfaithful wife if she had stayed with a particular gentleman at a hotel in New York.
“I refuse to answer that question,” she responded.
“Did you stay with the man in Los Angeles?”
“I refuse to answer that question.”
“Did you stay with the man in Miami?”
“No,” she answered proudly.
Florio quieted down, and I turned my attention to Patterson. “This isn’t a case for punies, and you know it, H.T., so until I see your motion, and until the judge grants it-which should be the same time Tampa Bay wins the Super Bowl-you can forget about prying into financial resources.”
Patterson kept blathering as if he hadn’t heard me. “Your client is guilty of gross and glaring negligence, willful and wanton misconduct, egregious and intentional deviation from the standard of care imposed on social hosts. Thus, we are entitled to what is euphemistically called smart money in an amount sufficient to make the defendant smart, i.e., feel pain. Hence, your objection is obdurate and obstinate, ornery and obstreperous. Your conduct is predictably perverse and consistently contumacious. You…”
When H.T. lapses into his seductive singsong, even I stop and listen, usually tapping my toe on the floor, keeping time with the rhythm until he runs out of steam.
“…thwart justice by defending actions that are depraved and degenerate. If you continue this iniquitous and unscrupulous stonewalling, we shall have no recourse but to take this matter before the judge and apply for sanctions.”
“H.T., chill out.”
His eyes lit up. “That’s just what your client’s tortuous misconduct caused to occur. The terminal chilling-out of a dedicated citizen, a man who put civic duty above financial reward, a man who spent his all-too-brief life fighting the robber barons and the well-connected. A man who walked through the valley of greed and gluttony, cupidity and corruption, and sought the straight-and-narrow path.
“Save it for the jury, H.T.”
“A man cannot indiscriminately let flow a river of demon rum to his guest,” H.T. continued, impervious, “then abdicate his responsibility. No, he must be made to pay, and pay till it hurts.”
Nicky Florio’s olive complexion was beginning to color. He drummed his well-manicured nails on the tabletop. His black hair was slicked straight back, his dark eyes blazing at H.T. Patterson. Florio wore a jet-black suit, a white-on-white shirt, and one of those expensive Italian silk ties that looks like a bouquet of flowers and costs more than most small appliances. He leaned toward me and whispered, “Do I have to listen to this shit? Jesus, let’s get it over with. I got a business to run.”
I calmed him with a hand on his shoulder and turned to my opponent. “H.T., you’re wasting a lot of valuable
