of trial lawyers and was mightily impressed. Harry Rex didn’t want to spend the money, and claimed he could pick a jury better than anyone else in the state. Jake had to remind his friend that he had not picked a jury in ten years because he realized back then that jurors didn’t like him. They had spent a day driving to Atlanta to meet Murray Silerberg, after which Harry Rex reluctantly got on board. The fee was a flat $20,000, plus travel expenses.
Jake made the call to Stan and said hit the credit line. Stan once again told him he was crazy, to which Jake replied, in true trial lawyer fashion, “Gotta spend money to make money.” It was true—litigation loans were becoming popular across the country, and trial lawyers, ever eager to brag about their verdicts, had begun bragging about how much they borrowed and spent convincing juries.
Silerberg’s firm studied every civil verdict in the country, with a special interest in the Deep South and Florida. Most of their clients, and verdicts, were close to home. A partner followed verdicts in urban areas, while Silerberg was fascinated with small towns and counties where the juries were much more conservative.
When he got the green light from Jake, he immediately began polling rural voters in north Mississippi to gauge their attitudes about courts, lawyers, and lawsuits. The polling was extensive and included hypothetical cases involving parents and children killed in auto accidents.
At the same time, an investigative team working for Silerberg began digging through the backgrounds of the names on the golden list. The Smallwood suite had been a large, empty storage space for years, but when Jake filed suit thirteen months earlier it was converted to a war room. The investigators took it over and were soon thumbtacking sheets of paper and enlarged photos on all four walls. Photos of the homes, trailers, apartments, cars, trucks, and places of employment of the prospective jurors. They dug through land records, court filings and dockets, anything that was in the public domain. They were careful and tried not to be seen, but several prospective jurors complained later that they saw strangers with cameras in their neighborhoods.
Of the ninety-seven names, eight were soon confirmed to be dead. Jake knew only seven of those still living, and as he studied the list he once again marveled at how few names he recognized. He had lived his entire life in Ford County, population 32,000, and thought he had a lot of friends. Harry Rex claimed to know something about twenty of the potential jurors.
The early polling was less than encouraging. Not surprisingly, Murray Silerberg knew that juries in the rural South are suspicious of big verdicts and tight with money, even when it belonged to large corporations. It was extremely difficult to convince hardworking people to hand over a million dollars when they were living from paycheck to paycheck. Jake was well aware of this. He had never asked a jury for seven figures, but even so he had been burned. A year earlier, he got a bit carried away and demanded $100,000 from a jury in a case that was worth less than half of that. A split jury gave him only $26,000 and the case was on appeal. Harry Rex watched the closing arguments and thought Jake alienated some of the jurors by asking for too much.
The lawyers and their high-priced consultant knew the dangers of appearing greedy.
Privately, though, Jake and Harry Rex were delighted with the list. There were more prospects under the age of fifty than over it, and that should translate into younger parents with more sympathy. Old white jurors were the most conservative. The county was 26 percent black, and so was the list, a high number. In most white counties, blacks registered to vote in lower numbers. They were also known to be more sympathetic for the little guy battling the corporation. And Harry Rex claimed to know two “ringers,” men who could be persuaded to see things the plaintiffs’ way.
The mood around Jake’s office changed dramatically. Gone were the worries about defending Drew Gamble and dealing with that tragedy. They were quickly replaced with the excitement of a major trial and the endless preparations for it.
* * *
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BUT THE GAMBLE case was not going away. For reasons having more to do with overcrowding than proper care, Drew needed to leave Whitfield. After eighteen days, his doctor, Sadie Weaver, was ordered to ship him back