Union Atlantic Page 0,64
mean any offense. Your Honor."
"All right, then," he said. "Is there anything you'd like to say in addition to your submissions in this case?"
"Oh, yes, there is. You see, after I sent you the letter I found this book in the library that had what they called model pleadings, and right away I realized that I may have somewhat obscured my central contention. The way I wrote it out, I mean. This business of the thirty years. I understand that. Why we have to quiet the wishes of the dead like that I'm not so sure, but there we are. I'll leave that for another day. But what I'm saying is slightly different. Would you mind if I read a quote?"
"Go right ahead," Cushman said, leaning back in his chair.
"This is from a book I came across by a Professor Duckington. He writes, 'While, in its infinite wisdom, the legislature has seen fit to extinguish the rights of individuals in possession of contingent remainders in real property, presumably in the interest of dusting titles clean of those cobwebs of the common law that were seen as an encumbrance to an efficient and reliable system of sale and purchase, the people's representatives were sufficiently mindful of their own prerogatives, along with those of churches and charitable corporations, as to exclude themselves and the latter from the consequences of their good judgment.'"
She closed the book, returned it to the table, and smiled proudly.
"Heaven help the man's students," Cushman said, "but it sounds accurate enough. The rule applies to individuals. But the distinction's not relevant in this case."
"Oh, but it is, George," she said. "You see, my grandfather - he was a charity."
"Come again."
"Willard Graves, before he died, he turned himself into a charity: the Graves Society. We've been puttering along ever since. My point is, if you look at the records, he didn't give the land to Finden. The society did. So you see, the thirty-year rule - it doesn't apply here. The conditions in the bequest are still good. Which means the land no longer belongs to Finden or to Mr. Fanning. It belongs to our family's trust. In fact, it has ever since the town sold it. The documents are all here in my file. I believe all I need from the court is the title. And then we'll be done."
For the following ten seconds no one in the courtroom uttered a word. In fact, they barely moved. Like guests at a funeral who have just witnessed the lid of the coffin come open and the corpse sit up to greet them with a smile, they stared at Charlotte in awe.
Then the shouting began.
Mikey nearly fell over the front end of the jury box, where he and Doug had been instructed to sit, as he leapt up to yell, "Approach! Approach!," taking on, in panicked violation of courtroom decorum, the voice of the judge himself, whose rejoinder was hardly audible over the fuming objections of the town lawyer, who didn't even bother addressing himself to the bench, hurling his words directly at Charlotte. By the time Judge Cushman got a hold of his gavel and began slamming it, Wilkie and Sam had scampered into the aisle and begun barking up a racket, causing everyone but an appalled Henry to turn in still greater astonishment to the sight of two drooling hounds bolting toward the front of the courtroom.
"Bailiff!" Cushman cried, standing to pound his gavel. "Bailiff!"
Order wasn't restored for another ten minutes, as the dogs were dragged snarling from the room and the lawyers, ignoring local rules, jumped onto their cell phones to offices and aides in a desperate effort to fill in the suddenly gaping void in their understanding of a case for which they had barely bothered to prepare. After denying repeated motions for a continuance, Judge Cushman declared a recess and returned to his chambers with Charlotte's file.
By the time he'd finished examining the documents, he'd been reminded that there were, after all, a few unique pleasures to his occupation. He could of course give the town time to regroup. But they had no good argument for why they deserved such a reprieve. The evidence Charlotte was relying on had been stored in their own basement. And as to the legal argument, she was perfectly correct. The donation of the land had come from a charity. The rule didn't apply. He needn't reach the question of whether the town had been willful or merely negligent in its