The Color of Law Read Online Free PDF Page B

maid faded from his mind and was replaced by the image of a smug-faced Frank Turner, famous plaintiffs’ lawyer, leaning back in his chair in his fancy office convinced he was about to win this game and beat Scott Fenney out of two million dollars to buy off sweet Nadine. Not today, Frank. Scott grabbed the 9-iron, punched Frank’s button, engaged the speakerphone, and picked up right where he had left off.
    “
Two million?
That’s an expensive piece of ass, Frank. What, she was a virgin?”
    “Her sexual history is irrelevant.”
    “Yeah, like it was for Kobe.” Scott pointed the 9-iron at the speakerphone. “Chances are, Frank, she’s been screwing since she was fourteen, so you damn well better advise your client that if she wants to go to trial, we’re gonna track down every swinging dick she’s ever met up close and personal, we’re gonna put their owners on the stand to tell the world about Nadine’s many virtues, and by the time we’re through with her sweet little ass, she’ll make those hookers on Harry Hines look like a bunch of goddamn nuns!”
    “Oh, yeah? Well, you’d better advise Tom Dibrell that by the time I’m through with him he’ll wish to God he’d stayed faithful to wife number one!”
    Scott laughed boisterously, as if that was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
    “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen her.” He again faced the window and checked his position at the top of his backswing. “Listen to us, Frank, a couple of good ol’ SMU boys going at each other like an Aggie and a Longhorn. Look, bottom line, both our clients got some downside here. So to make this go away for both of them, Tom will pay sweet little ol’ Nadine half a million bucks, and that’s a hell of a lot more money than she was making at Hooters.”
    “Tips are pretty good there, Scott. One-point-five.”
    “They ain’t that good, Frank. One million.”
    “Done.”
    He checked his downswing. “I’ll have the release and confidentiality agreement to you first thing in the morning. You get it signed and back to me, I’ll have a check waiting.”
    “Cashier’s check, payable jointly to me and Nadine Johnson.”
    “Frank, you make damn sure Nadine understands that if she talks about her little roll in the hay with Tom to anyone—even her goddamned psychiatrist!—the agreement requires that she return every penny and that you return your fee. And Tom’s likely to strangle her.”
    Frank laughed. “She talks, I’ll strangle the bitch myself she costs me three hundred thirty thousand.”
    “What are you taking, a third?”
    “Standard contingency fee.”
    “Three hundred thirty thousand bucks, not a bad day’s work, Frank.”
    “It’s a dirty job, Scott, but someone’s gotta do it.”
    Scott shook his head. Plaintiffs’ lawyers. Scott was figuring on making maybe $50 million over his career, but plaintiffs’ lawyers, those bastards make that every year, taking 33 percent, 40 percent, sometimes 50 percent of their clients’ damage awards, almost always settlements like this because a corporation can’t afford to roll the dice with a Texas jury, not when the jurors might pull another
Pennzoil v. Texaco
and come back with an $11,120,976,110.83 judgment, the largest jury verdict in the history of the world. Which made Texas a plaintiffs’ lawyers’ playground. To date, Franklin Turner, Esq., had amassed over one billion dollars in verdicts and settlements, the bastard.
    “Hey, Scott, what do you think about that black halfback we got from Houston? He gonna break your records?”
    Frank had been in the Mustang marching band at SMU. Tuba.
    “They’ve been trying for fourteen years now, Frank. No one’s come close.”
    “One day, Scott, one day.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah…Good doing business with you, Frank.”
    Scott reached over with the 9-iron and hit the disconnect button on the speakerphone. A successful ten-minute negotiation, for which he felt duty bound to bill his best client