Sycamore Row - John Grisham

16
Since the arrival of Mr. Hubbard’s last will and testament two weeks earlier, the
morning mail had become far more interesting. Each day brought a new wrinkle as
more lawyers piled on and scrambled for position. Wade Lanier filed a petition to
contest the will on behalf of Ramona and Ian Dafoe, and it proved inspirational. Within
days, similar petitions were filed by lawyers representing Herschel Hubbard, his
children, and the Dafoe children. Since petitions were allowed to be liberally amended,
the early drafts followed the same basic strategy. They claimed that the handwritten will
was invalid because (1) Seth Hubbard lacked testamentary capacity and (2) he was
unduly influenced by Lettie Lang. Nothing was offered to substantiate these allegations,
but that was not unusual in the suing business. Mississippi held to the practice of “notice
pleading,” or, in other words, just lay out the basics and try to prove the specifics later.
Behind the scenes, Ian Dafoe’s efforts to convince Herschel to join ranks with the
Wade Lanier firm proved unproductive and even caused a rift. Herschel had not been
impressed with Lanier and thought he would be ineffective with a jury, though he had
little to base this on. In need of a Mississippi lawyer, Herschel approached Stillman Rush
with the idea of representing his interests. As the attorneys for the 1987 will, the Rush
firm was facing a declining role in the contest. It would have little to do but watch, and
it looked doubtful Judge Atlee would tolerate its presence, even from the sideline, with
the meter ticking, of course. Herschel made the shrewd decision to hire the highly
regarded Rush firm, on a contingency basis, and said good-bye to his Memphis attorney.
While the contestants of the will jockeyed for position, the proponents fought among
themselves. Rufus Buckley made an official entry into the case as local counsel for Lettie
Lang. Jake filed a trivial objection on the grounds that Buckley did not have the
necessary experience. The bombs landed when Booker Sistrunk, as promised, filed a
motion to remove Jake and replace him with the firm of Sistrunk & Bost, with Buckley
as the Mississippi attorney. The following day, Sistrunk and Buckley filed another
motion asking Judge Atlee to remove himself on the vague, bizarre grounds that he held
some sort of bias against the handwritten will. Then they filed a motion requesting a
change of venue to another, “fairer” county. In other words, a blacker one.
Jake spoke at length to a litigator in Memphis, a stranger connected by a mutual
acquaintance. This lawyer had tangled with Sistrunk for years, was no fan, but had
come to grudgingly admire the results. Sistrunk’s strategy was to blow up a case, reduce
it to a race war, attack every white person involved, including the presiding judge if
necessary, and haggle over jury selection long enough to get enough blacks on the