Authors: James Grippando
Black Horizon (7 page)
“Two,” said Javier. “Who are you checking on?”
She couldn’t find the strength to say his name, to have her worst fears confirmed. “My fiancé,” she said.
Sicario stepped forward and took the pad from the desktop. Josefina looked away at first, then forced herself to watch her trainer read the list. The moment he lifted his eyes from the paper and looked at her, she knew. Slowly, he laid the list aside and came to her.
Her whole body trembled as her trainer held her tight. “I’m so sorry, Josefina.”
“Oh, no!” she said, burying her face into his shoulder. “No, no! Please tell me no!”
Not even the arms of a former Olympian could stop her from shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Rafael is gone.”
J
ack found the last remaining room in Key West at a bed-and-breakfast, at quadruple the normal September rate, and worked all night.
It was important to move quickly. Although no one but Bianca was in a position to bring a wrongful death suit in the United States, Jack knew that armies of lawyers were ginning up individual and class-action claims on behalf of Florida businesses and property owners. Bianca’s injury was of an entirely different nature, and he didn’t want it buried in the avalanche of litigation over lost profits and damaged beach homes.
Around ten o’clock Wednesday morning, Jack got a text message from the courier:
Done.
The wrongful death action on behalf of Bianca Lopez, a widow, was on file with the circuit court in Key West.
Jack was too tired to walk upstairs to his room. His B&B was one of many century-old Victorian-style houses built during the commercial shipping heyday of Key West, and he fell asleep in a rocking chair on the front porch. The manager woke him at half past noon.
“My apologies, Mr. Swyteck. I have your secretary from Miami on the line. She says it’s urgent.”
Jack took the cordless phone. Bonnie sounded out of breath, which was normal whenever there was a surprise development in a case. And a surprise it was: Jack needed to be at the Monroe County courthouse at two p.m. for a hearing on an emergency motion filed by the oil companies. Jack had expected a counterattack of some sort that was intended to send him a message that this was a war he should never have started. But this was ridiculously quick.
“How can this be?” said Jack. “Our process server hasn’t even served our complaint yet.”
“It’s weird. I called the clerk of the court, and there’s no motion on file either.”
“Have you gotten anything from the opposing lawyers?”
“No. Like I said, nothing’s been filed, so I don’t even know who they are.”
“Has our case been assigned to a judge?”
“Judge Carlyle. I called her chambers, but it went to voice mail.”
“Who told you there’s an emergency hearing?”
“Freddy Foman.”
Jack sat up in the rocking chair. “Huh?”
“Surely you remember Freddy.”
Freddy was hard to forget. He’d started law school with Jack, flunked out after one semester, enrolled in a night school that was barely accredited—and then he’d gone on to become one of the richest lawyers in Miami, mostly on the backs of dead and dying clients in asbestos litigation. He was a gregarious guy with a big personality and stature to match, carrying a rotund three hundred pounds almost his entire adult life. The last time Jack had seen him, however, he had dropped to fewer than two hundred. It wasn’t the South Beach diet. Freddy’s law partner had turned out to be a con man who was running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. Freddy knew nothing about it but was swept up in the indictment. During the course of a two-month criminal trial, Jack had witnessed the suppression of Freddy’s appetite firsthand: Jack was the lawyer who’d won his acquittal.
“What does Freddy Foman have to do with Bianca’s case?”
“I honestly don’t know, Jack. He was getting ready to fly his plane to Key West and didn’t have time to explain. He just said you need to be at the hearing and that he would meet you outside the courtroom. If I were you, I would go.”
Jack couldn’t remember a time when Bonnie had steered him wrong. He ran upstairs and put on the nicest clothes he had with him. Khakis and a long-sleeve shirt wouldn’t have cut it in Miami, but the rules were different in Key West.
The Freeman Justice Center is the main courthouse for Key West, probably the only judicial center in the world that closes one full business day each October for a citywide Halloween celebration. It was one thirty by the time Jack entered the building. He dialed Freddy’s cell for a fifth time before passing his iPhone through the metal detector. Again, the call went straight to voice mail.
Answer your damn phone, Freddy.
Jack counted at least three or four dozen lawyers in the hallway outside Judge Carlyle’s chambers, and more were pouring out of the elevators. Bianca’s lawsuit named multiple defendants—the manufacturer and owner of the Scarborough 8, the oil companies in the consortium, and about a half-dozen related entities that arguably did enough business in the United States to justify bringing Bianca’s lawsuit in Florida. As a sole practitioner, Jack had been outnumbered in cases before, but this was insane.
No way can all these lawyers be defense counsel in my case.
“Swyteck, how you doin’, my friend?”
Jack recognized Freddy’s voice immediately. He turned and did a double take. Freddy had ballooned back up to well over three hundred pounds, and his size XXXL Hawaiian shirt looked like a circus tent covered with smiling dolphins and dancing hula girls.
“Freddy, what’s this about a hearing in my oil case?”
“Not
your
case,” he said, extending his arms widely. “
Our cases
. As of noon, there were about three thousand lawsuits filed against the consortium for property damage and lost business in Florida. Many more to come.”
Jack suddenly felt like Rip Van Winkle, having slept through it all in a rocking chair on the front porch of his B&B.
“Who do you represent?” asked Jack.
“‘Places of lodging’ is the best description. Everything from trailer parks to Big Palm Island Resort.”
“You don’t say,” said Jack, deciding not to bite on Big Palm. “What’s the hearing about?”
“Money,” said Freddy. “The biggest problem we will all face—including you—is collecting a judgment from Chinese and Venezuelan companies who were drilling in Cuban waters. So a group of us came up with the idea to ask the court to freeze some of the defendants’ assets in the U.S. pending the outcome of our cases. The plan was to go after a supertanker filled with Venezuelan crude when it enters a U.S. port. One supertanker is worth about a hundred million bucks.”
“Sounds like a tough argument,” said Jack.
“Even tougher now. The oil companies somehow got wind of it, and they filed this emergency motion to stop us from going after any supertankers before trial.”
“Why didn’t I get notice of this?”
“Because these sneaky bastard defense lawyers didn’t file the motion in your case. They don’t want you here. You got the only client who’s a widow. Everyone else here is complaining about property damage and lost business. Judges are human, and the oil companies know that if they are going to persuade a judge to protect their assets, they need to keep the widow out of the courtroom.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to take the lead at the hearing.”
“I haven’t even seen the motion.”
“We have smart lawyers on our side, too, Jack. We can prep you in thirty minutes.”
“You should have given me more time.”
“I had to get the Plaintiffs’ Liaison Committee on board before talking to you. Everything’s all set.”
It wasn’t an ideal situation, but Jack had gone into court with less advance warning, sometimes in matters of life and death—literally.
“What do you say, Swyteck?”
Jack’s gaze drifted toward the elevators, where more lawyers were pushing their way into the overcrowded hallway.
“Either way,” said Jack, “it looks like my second honeymoon is officially over.”
A
t two p.m. Jack was seated in the last row of the public gallery in Judge Carlyle’s courtroom in the Freeman Justice Center.
As expected, the Cuban government and its state-owned oil company refused to participate in the hearing in any way, through legal counsel or otherwise, but more than a dozen attorneys for the Chinese, Venezuelan, and Russian oil companies were at the defense counsel’s table. To their right, near the empty jury box, sat the Plaintiffs’ Liaison Committee—six men and one woman, seven distinguished members of the plaintiffs’ bar—and the not-so-distinguished Freddy Foman. Each had muscled his or her way to the forefront in the race to speak on behalf of all those who had filed lawsuits against the oil companies for property damage and loss of business. Jack had declined the invitation to join them, instinct having told him to keep Bianca’s claim away from the pack of wolves. To Freddy’s chagrin, Jack attended the hearing only as an observer.
“How many property claims you got?” asked the man beside Jack.
The question only confirmed that there were few bona fide “spectators” in the courtroom. Dozens of lawyers had lost round one in the power struggle to serve on the Plaintiffs’ Liaison Committee, and they were crammed shoulder to shoulder in the fifteen rows of public seating along with Jack. A separate, reserved section of seating for the media was likewise filled beyond capacity. More members of the press had managed to plant themselves throughout the gallery between the elbows of lawyers. Jack was pretty sure that the guy next to him was a lawyer, not a reporter—but it wasn’t always easy to tell.
“I’m just here to watch,” said Jack.
“I picked up six hundred new clients this morning, including Big Palm Island Resort.”
“Really? I heard that Freddy Foman has Big Palm.”
“Freddy
had
Big Palm,” he said with a wink.
The feeding frenzy had begun, triggering one thought for Jack:
Thank God I stayed out of this.
“All rise!”
The crowd heeded the bailiff’s command, and a chorus of fading conversations and foot shuffling echoed through the courtroom as Chief Judge Sandy Carlyle took her seat at the bench. Carlyle was a transplanted lawyer from Manhattan who’d retired to Florida, nearly died of boredom in her condo, and so ran for one of Key West’s elected judgeships. With her typical “212” directness, she instructed everyone to take a seat and moved straight to the afternoon’s business.
“I’ve read the briefs,” said the judge. “The most directly impacted defendant appears to be Petróleos de Venezuela, the state-owned Venezuelan company that was in charge of the drilling on the Scarborough 8. The parties seem to be in agreement that Petróleos currently has a supertanker full of oil at the Port Arthur Refinery in Texas. It’s my understanding that Petróleos seeks an order of this court that would prevent the plaintiffs from seizing any Venezuelan supertanker in U.S. waters until after there is a trial on the merits and a final judgment is entered in the plaintiffs’ favor. Is that a fair summation, counsel?”
A distinguished Latin man with silver hair rose from his seat at the defense counsel’s table and buttoned his suit coat. Despite the relaxed Key West dress code, he was a walking advertisement for Savile Row.
“Yes, that’s fair, Your Honor.”
“And you are . . . ?”
“Luis Candela on behalf of Petróleos de Venezuela.”
Jack knew the name. Candela was a past president of the American Bar Association, the first Hispanic ever so elected. His Washington law firm specialized in mineral rights in Central and South America. He spoke with all the confidence of an authority on the subject.
“As the court is well aware, assets can be frozen before trial only in very limited circumstances, such as where the defendant is hiding assets in order to make himself judgment-proof. In this case, there is absolutely no danger that Petróleos will hide its supertankers. My client has long-term oil-supply contracts with refineries in the United States. It is absolutely critical to keep all of those supertankers moving freely in and out of U.S. ports to fulfill those contracts.”
“That’s a compelling point,” said the judge.
“It’s especially compelling here,” said Candela, “where it is highly doubtful that the plaintiffs will prevail at trial.”
“It’s too early to be arguing about that,” said the judge.
“This is a key point, Your Honor. After the
Exxon Valdez
spill in Alaska, Congress passed the Ocean Pollution Control Act. That act makes it unnecessary for anyone affected by an oil spill to prove that the oil company was at fault. The only issue is whether the oil spill caused damage and the dollar amount of those damages. But the act doesn’t apply to spills in Cuban waters. Every single one of the plaintiffs in this courtroom must meet the strict requirements of international maritime law. They must prove to a jury exactly what each defendant did wrong. In other words, the plaintiffs here are a long, long way from collecting any money.”
“That’s an issue I’ve not yet focused on,” said the judge, “but I understand your point.”
“One last thing,” said Candela. “It is important for the court to understand the history of overreaching in situations like this one. For example, in the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010, two of Mr. Foman’s clients from south Florida were eventually convicted of fraud and had to give up their Bentley and waterfront McMansion on Lighthouse Point to serve a thirteen-year sentence in federal prison.”
“I object,” said Freddy, rising. “Mr. Candela is talking about two bad apples in a class action with over ten thousand members. Unbeknownst to me, they stole the identities of folks in Broward County and filed three million dollars in phony claims. I never even met those crooks.”
“No need to explain,” said the judge. “No one’s motives are being impugned today. But I will say this, Mr. Foman: the issue before the court seems like a no-brainer. I can’t imagine why any assets should be seized before one drop of oil has even reached the Florida Keys.”