Doubt (Caroline Auden #1) - C. E. Tobisman Page 0,5
the Committee that no one loathed.” Louis smiled slightly. “Regrettably, he’s more of a politician than a strategist.”
As Louis finished speaking, his eyes traveled to a table by the western window of his office. With brass fittings holding its ancient joints together, the small pedestal table had only one chair positioned in front of it. Atop it sat an antique bone chess set. The pieces were positioned midgame, some of the black-and-white figurines beside the board, already forced from the battle.
Caroline didn’t recall the chess set from her last visit to Louis’s office, but she wasn’t surprised to see he played. While he exuded an old-world grace, Louis’s reputation as a master tactician spoke of a street fighter beneath the cultured exterior. Chess was a gentleman’s game—every bit as nasty as a bar brawl, only infinitely more deliberate.
“Dale wants your advice on strategy, doesn’t he?” Caroline surmised, her nerves now almost forgotten as she probed the role this prominent litigator had taken in this high-stakes case.
“Among other things.” Louis nodded. “I told Dale to coordinate the SuperSoy litigation before Judge Samuels here in Los Angeles.”
“Why Judge Samuels?” Caroline asked. Louis never did anything without careful thought and a sound rationale.
“Judge Samuels has been on the bench for three decades. He’s a talented jurist with experience handling multidistrict litigations.”
Caroline nodded. Those were good, sensible reasons.
“Also, his wife is on dialysis.” Louis’s eyes twinkled with the secret knowledge. “As a result, I expect that Judge Samuels knows something about kidney disease and the terrible toll it takes on its victims . . . and their families.”
Caroline opened her mouth to ask her boss how he’d learned about the judge’s personal life, but Louis held up a hand.
“Information is power,” he said simply.
Caroline had heard the litigation platitude before. It was one of many that Louis had shared with his classroom of rapt students, each future lawyer scribbling down the golden nuggets of wisdom he cast in his wake. She’d felt an immediate affinity with her professor upon learning that he, like she, was an information hound. She preferred the phrase to the less savory term stalker.
“In addition to advising on strategy and monitoring the proceedings here in Los Angeles,” Louis continued, “we’ll be assisting the Committee with the preparation of our side’s opposition to Med-Gen’s Daubert motion.”
“The other side’s challenging the science,” Caroline stated rather than asked.
“Yes. Judge Samuels will get to decide whether it is scientifically possible for SuperSoy to cause a kidney to fail. If he isn’t convinced that the scientific literature demonstrates such a link, he’ll dismiss the entire litigation.”
Caroline silently absorbed the significance of Med-Gen’s motion. A single fallible individual would be acting as the gatekeeper for every SuperSoy case in the entire country.
“A Daubert motion is to be expected in a case of this magnitude,” Louis continued. “It’s Med-Gen’s best chance to drown this litigation in the bathtub.” He exhaled softly. “Sadly, they have a rather good chance of doing exactly that.”
Caroline’s eyes widened. The Louis she’d known from class had always exuded confidence. A supreme mastery of all pieces in the game. This unvarnished skepticism about their chances of beating Med-Gen’s Daubert motion seemed out of character. And unsettling.
“You must understand the obstacles we face,” Louis said. “The biotech industry has always painted the public’s fears about GMOs as alarmist. As ungrounded in any actual science. To win, we must prove that the public’s fears have now come to terrifying fruition. And to do that, we must prove something no one has ever proved before—that GMOs have the capacity to kill people.”
The frown on Caroline’s mouth mirrored her boss’s. The task ahead was going to be hard. Creating new precedent always was. But this was especially true when an entire industry would be affected by a court’s decision. Especially a lucrative, powerful industry.
“The good news is that to obtain relief for our clients, we needn’t try all fifty thousand cases,” Louis said. “We only need to beat this motion. If we can do that, if we can convince Judge Samuels that SuperSoy has the capacity to damage kidneys, Med-Gen will settle.”
“How do you know?” Caroline asked. She silently lamented the lack of practical education at law school. She’d spent three months studying the dormant Commerce Clause, but not three seconds learning how to evaluate a case for settlement. It was one of the reasons she’d loved Louis’s class. His lessons on procedural maneuvering were akin to learning how to sneak past the velvet rope at an