The Color of Law Read Online Free PDF Page A

consultant. He’ll deliver his report only to me. Seller’s counsel can come to my office to read the report, but no copies will leave my office. That report will belong to Ford Stevens, not to Dibrell or the seller. That way, the report will be protected by the attorney-client privilege, and I can swear to the court that neither party has an environmental report subject to TRAIL’s subpoena. And no one will ever know about the lead leaching into the river.”
    “Will that work?” Sid asked.
    “It worked for the tobacco companies, Sid. They kept all that evidence about nicotine being addictive secret for forty years—because their lawyers hired the scientists who conducted the studies. So the studies were protected from subpoenas by the attorney-client privilege. No one ever knew that evidence was out there, because their lawyers hid it behind the privilege. Just like we’re going to do.”
    Sid was beaming. “That’s brilliant. We can then close the deal with the appropriate environmental escrow.”
    “Exactly,” Scott said. “And those environmentalists can go fuck a tree.”
             
    “Frank, how the hell you been, buddy?”
    Scott got Franklin Turner, Esq., famous plaintiffs’ lawyer, on the phone on the first try. No doubt Frank had instructed his secretary that if Tom Dibrell’s lawyer called to put him right through, aware that one phone call might net him a handsome fee.
    “Two million, Scott.”
    Scott had the door closed and Frank on the speakerphone so he could practice his golf swing while negotiating the settlement of a young woman’s claim that Tom Dibrell had used his position as her employer to pressure her to have sex with him—which, knowing Scott’s rich client, was probably true. Scott swung the 9-iron he kept in his office; he used to swing a 6-iron, but he had punched holes in the ceiling tile on his follow-through, so he had dropped down to a 9-iron. From across his office, Scott said: “Jesus, Frank, we could at least shoot the shit for a few minutes, just out of professional courtesy.”
    “Scott, Dibrell’s a fifty-five-year-old father of five—”
    “Six,” Scott said while checking his golfing address position in the window’s reflection.
    “Father of six, married—”
    “For the fourth time.” Scott checked his takeaway.
    “Married and CEO of one of the biggest goddamn real-estate companies in Dallas, he’s a member of the business council, the chamber of commerce, and every other important civic organization in this city, and he forces himself on a naïve twenty-two-year-old young woman—”
    “
Forces himself?
Give me a break, Frank. Knowing the girls Tom hires, she probably went down faster than Monica Lewinsky.”
    He chuckled and checked his backswing at the halfway point.
    “It’s not a goddamn joke, Scott! Nadine was irreparably harmed!”
    “But two million bucks would make the hurt go away, right?”
    “No, but it would make her go away.”
    There was a soft knock on the door. Scott turned from the window to see Sue poking her head in. She said in a low voice: “Mr. Fenney, your daughter’s on the phone. She says it’s an emergency.”
    An emergency?
A jolt of fatherly fear ricocheted through Scott’s central nervous system like a pinball setting off alarms. Four long strides and he was at his desk. He said to the phone: “Frank, hang on the line, okay?”
    Scott didn’t wait for a response. He leaned the 9-iron against the desk, picked up the receiver, and punched the blinking light on the phone, putting Frank Turner on hold and his nine-year-old daughter on the line.
    “Hi, baby, what’s wrong?”
    A tiny voice: “Mother’s gone and Consuela’s crying.”
    “Why?”
    “They arrested Esteban.”
    “
Who?
The INS?”
    “He said ‘
inmigración.
’”
    “You talked to him?”
    “Consuela talked to him first, but she started crying so I talked to him. He said they arrested him where he was building a home, said they’re