Lettie Lang used her position as a caregiver to become intimate with Seth Hubbard. Intimacy can mean many things. She cared for Seth, at times bathed him, changed his clothes, cleaned up behind him, did all the things that caregivers are supposed to do in those delicate and awful situations. Seth was a dying old man, hit with a debilitating and deadly cancer that left him weak and feeble.”
Jake turned and looked at Wade Lanier and the gang of lawyers at the other table. “They will imply a lot, ladies and gentlemen, but they can prove nothing. There were no physical relations between Seth Hubbard and Lettie Lang. Only hints, and suggestions, and implications, but no proof because it never happened.”
Jake tossed his legal pad on his table and wrapped it up. “This will be a short trial with a lot of witnesses. As in every trial, the issues at times might become confusing. This is often done on purpose by the lawyers, but don’t be led astray. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not your job to distribute Seth Hubbard’s money. It’s your job to determine if he knew what he was doing when he wrote his last will. Nothing more, nothing less. Thank you.”
At Judge Atlee’s heavy-handed direction, the contestants had agreed to streamline their opening and closing remarks by allowing Wade Lanier to handle them. He strode to the podium in a wrinkled blazer, a tie too short, and a shirttail barely tucked in. The few patches of hair around his ears shot out in all directions. He gave the impression of a scatterbrained plodder who might forget to show up tomorrow. It was all an act to disarm the jury. Jake knew better.
He began with “Thank you, Mr. Brigance. I’ve been trying lawsuits for thirty years, and I’ve yet to meet a young lawyer with as much talent as Jake Brigance. You folks here in Ford County are lucky to have such a fine young lawyer among you. It’s an honor to be here doing battle with him, and also to be in this grand old courtroom.” He paused to look at his notes as Jake stewed over all the fake praise. When he wasn’t in front of a jury, Lanier was smooth and articulate. Now, though, onstage, he was folksy, down-to-earth, and immensely likable.
“Now, this is just an opening statement and nothing I say or nothing Mr. Brigance just said is evidence. The evidence comes from only one place, and that’s this witness chair right here. Lawyers sometimes get carried away and say things they cannot later prove at trial, and they also tend to leave out important facts the jury should know about. For example, Mr. Brigance did not mention the fact that when Seth Hubbard wrote his last will, the only person in the building with him was Lettie Lang. It was a Saturday morning, and she never worked on Saturdays. She went to his house, and from there she drove him in his nice new Cadillac over to his office. He unlocked it. They went in. She says she was there to clean his office, but she had never done this before. They were alone. For some two hours they were alone in the offices of the Berring Lumber Company, Seth Hubbard’s main headquarters. When they arrived there on that Saturday morning, Seth Hubbard had a last will and testament prepared a year earlier by a fine firm of lawyers in Tupelo, lawyers he had trusted for years, and that will gave almost everything to his two adult children and four grandchildren. A typical will. A standard will. A sensible will. The kind of will virtually every American signs at one time or another. Ninety percent of all property that passes through wills passes to the family of the deceased. That’s the way it should be.”
Lanier was now pacing too, his stocky body lumbering back and forth, bowed somewhat at the waist. “But after spending two hours in his office that morning, alone with no one but Lettie Lang, when he left he had another will, one he’d written himself, one
Lanier paused near the witness chair, spread his arms wide in mock disbelief, and asked loudly, “Are we to believe she was not thinking about money? Come on, let’s get realistic here! Ms. Lang will tell you herself that she’d spent her career as a housekeeper, that her husband, Mr. Simeon Lang, who’s now in jail, had a spotty work record and could not be depended on for a paycheck, and that she’d raised five kids under difficult financial circumstances. Life was tough! There had never been a spare dime anywhere. Like a lot of folks, Lettie Lang was broke. She’d always been broke. And as she watched her boss inch closer and closer to death, you know she was thinking about money. It’s human nature. It’s not her fault. I’m not suggesting she was evil or greedy. Who among us would not have been thinking about the money?
“And on that Saturday morning last October, Lettie drove her boss to his office where they were alone for two hours. And while they were alone, one of the greatest fortunes in the history of this state changed hands. Twenty-four million dollars was transferred from the Hubbard family to a housekeeper Seth Hubbard had known for only three years.”
Brilliantly, Lanier paused as his last sentence rattled around the courtroom. Damn he’s good, Jake thought, glancing at the jury as if all was well. Frank Doley was glaring at him with a look that said, “I despise you.”
Lanier lowered his voice and continued: “We will attempt to prove Seth Hubbard was unduly influenced by Ms. Lang. The key to this case is the issue of undue influence, and there are several ways to prove it. One sign of undue influence is the making of a gift that is unusual or unreasonable. The gift Seth Hubbard made to Ms. Lang is grossly, unbelievably unusual and unreasonable. Forgive me. I can’t think of the right adjectives to describe it. Ninety percent of twenty-four million? And nothing for his family? That’s pretty unusual, folks. In my book, that’s pretty unreasonable. That screams of undue influence. If he wanted to do something nice for his housekeeper, he could’ve given her a million bucks. That’s a pretty generous gift. Two million? How about five? Actually, in my humble opinion, anything over a million dollars would be considered unusual and unreasonable, given the brief nature of their relationship.”
Lanier stepped back to the podium and glanced at his notes, then he looked at his watch. Eight minutes, and he was in no hurry. “We will attempt to prove undue influence by discussing a prior will made by Seth Hubbard. This will was prepared by a leading law firm in Tupelo a year before Seth died, and it left about 95 percent of his estate to his family. It’s a complicated will with a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo that only tax lawyers understand. I don’t understand it and we’ll try not to bore you with it. The purpose of discussing this earlier will is to illustrate the point that Seth was not thinking clearly. The earlier will, because it was prepared by tax lawyers who knew their stuff and not by a man on the verge of hanging himself, takes full advantage of the IRS code. In doing so, it saves over $3 million in taxes. Under Mr. Hubbard’s handwritten will, the IRS gets 51 percent, over $12 million. Under the earlier will, the IRS gets $9 million. Now, Mr. Brigance likes to say that Seth Hubbard knew exactly what he was doing. I doubt it. Think about it, folks. A man shrewd enough and clever enough to amass such a fortune in ten years does not throw together a handwritten document that will cost his estate $3 million. That’s absurd! That’s unusual and unreasonable!”
With his elbows he leaned on the podium and tapped his fingers together. He looked into the eyes of the jurors as they waited. He finally said, “Let me wrap things up here, and I must say you’re pretty lucky because neither Jake Brigance nor I believe in long speeches. Nor does Judge Atlee for that matter.” There were some smiles. It was almost funny. “I’d like to leave you with my opening thought, my first visual for this trial. Think of Seth Hubbard on October 1 of last year, facing certain death and already determined to speed it up, racked with pain and heavily medicated with painkillers, sad, lonely, single, estranged from his children and grandchildren, a dying, bitter old man who’d given up, and the only person near enough to hear him and console him was Lettie Lang. We’ll never know how close they really were. We’ll never know what went on between them. But we do know the outcome. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a clear case of a man making a terrible mistake while under the influence of someone after his money.”
When Lanier sat down, Judge Atlee said, “Call your first witness, Mr. Brigance.”
“The proponents call Sheriff Ozzie Walls.” From the second row, Ozzie hurried to the witness chair and was sworn in. Quince Lundy was seated at the table to Jake’s right, and though he had practiced law for almost forty years he had aggressively avoided courtrooms. Jake instructed him to glance at the jurors occasionally and make observations. As Ozzie was getting situated, Lundy slid over a note that read, “You were very good. So was Lanier. The jury is split. We’re screwed.”
Thanks, Jake thought. Portia shoved forward a legal pad. On it, her note read, “Frank Doley is pure evil.”
