A Patent Lie Read Online Free PDF Page A

partners in New York, some of whom, he was sure, were still working hard to forget him.
    “Could you leave me her telephone number and address? And tell Chris I'd like to see him.”
    “She'll appreciate that,”Tina said.
    “What's that?”
    “Mrs. Pearsall. Your visiting her. Paying your respects.”
    After Tina left, Seeley continued working down the list of witnesses, preparing for each a brief summary of his or her testimony, the first draft of his order of proof.
    Other than the travel-poster view, the conference room was virtually identical to the dozens in which Seeley had spent a good part of his professional life, plotting strategy with his trial team, taking or defending depositions, negotiating settlements. Law firm interior designers all had the same shopping list: dark gleaming wood for the bookshelves and conference table, plump leather-and-steel chairs, chrome carafes and ice buckets to sit next to the telephone on the sleek credenza. On one off-white wall was a generic painting, neither offensive nor banal, that looked as if it had been ordered by the yard.
    Seeley was near the end of the witness list when there was a knock at the open door and Chris Palmieri came in. In a firm where the younger lawyers went without ties and jackets, Palmieri wore a trimly cut gray suit, starched dress shirt, and silk tie. A pale pink pocket square was carefully folded to look like a casual afterthought, and his light hair was cropped close.
    “Tina said you wanted to ask me about something.”
    Seeley had wondered about Palmieri's prickliness not only when Tina introduced them in the workroom but also in their telephone conversations the week before. He assumed it was the young partner's resentment at being passed over to run the case when Pearsall died. But it could also have been ill will toward any lawyer who tried to replace his mentor and, probably, friend.
    “Do you know where the Warren deposition is?”
    “Warren?”
    Seeley slid the witness binder down the conference table to where Palmieri was. “Lily Warren. The scientist who St. Gall says invented AV/AS first.” Vaxtek's case turned on its claim that one of its own scientists, Alan Steinhardt, invented AV/AS. If St. Gall could prove that Warren invented AV/AS first, it would win.
    “Oh, her.” He left the binder on the conference table, unopened. “We didn't depose her.”
    Seeley waited. Not to depose a key witness was unthinkable.
    “St. Gall dropped her. It turns out she's a crackpot. They were afraid her testimony would backfire on them.”
    In a deposition, the deposing attorney—for Warren it would have been Pearsall or another Heilburn, Hardy lawyer—gets to ask the witness anything he wants. If, on questioning,Warren said something that hurt Vaxtek's position, the deposition transcript would be there to warn the lawyer against asking the same question at trial. However, if Warren said something that was favorable to Vaxtek and later contradicted herself at trial,Vaxtek could introduce the deposition transcript to impeach her testimony. Otherwise, no member of the jury would ever get to see the deposition. From Vaxtek's viewpoint deposing Warren was a no-lose proposition. Why, then, hadn't its lawyer done so?
    “So there's no record of her story?”
    “I think she talked to one of the newspapers, maybe the
Chronicle
, but after St. Gall dropped her, there wasn't a story.” Palmieri tilted his chair back from the table and closed his eyes. “No deposition, either.”
    “Do you know how we can reach her?”
    Palmieri was looking at him again, but made no effort to hide how boring he found this. “I think St. Gall fired her right after they cut her from the witness list.”
    “You'd think Pearsall would want to get her story down, for the record. She could still turn out to be a problem for us.”
    Palmieri flushed. He half rose and leaned over the table. “Warren was St. Gall's witness, not ours.” For the first time, he looked