Sycamore Row - John Grisham

35
Two weeks before the scheduled start of the war, the lawyers and their staffs met in the
main courtroom for a pretrial conference. Such gatherings were unheard-of back in the
old days, but the more modern rules of engagement called for them and even provided
an acronym, the PTC. Lawyers like Wade Lanier who fought on the civil side were well
versed in the strategies and nuances of the PTC. Jake less so. Reuben Atlee had never
presided over one, though he would not admit this. For him and his Chancery Court, a
major trial was a nasty divorce with money on the line. These were rare, and he
handled them the same way he had for thirty years, modern rules be damned.
Critics of the new rules of discovery and procedure whined that the PTC was nothing
more than a rehearsal for the trial, and thus it required the lawyers to prepare twice. It
was time-consuming, expensive, burdensome, and also restrictive. A document, an issue,
or a witness not properly covered in the PTC could not be considered at trial. Old
lawyers like Lucien who reveled in dirty tricks and ambushes hated the new rules
because they were designed to promote fairness and transparency. “Trials are not about
fairness, Jake, trials are about winning,” he’d said a thousand times.
Judge Atlee wasn’t too keen on them either, though he was duty-bound to follow
them. At ten o’clock Monday morning, March 20, he shooed away the handful of
spectators and told the bailiff to lock the door. This was not a public hearing.
As the lawyers were getting situated, Lester Chilcott, Lanier’s co-counsel, walked over
to Jake’s table and laid down some paperwork. “Updated discovery,” he said, as if
everything were routine. As Jake flipped through it, Judge Atlee called them to order
and began scanning faces to make sure all lawyers were present. “Still missing Mr.
Stillman Rush,” he mumbled into his microphone.
Jake’s surprise quickly turned to anger. In a section where all potential witnesses
were listed, Lanier had included the names of forty-five people. Their addresses were
scattered throughout the Southeast, with four in Mexico. Jake recognized only a handful;
a few he had actually deposed during discovery. A “document dump” was a common
dirty trick, one perfected by corporations and insurance companies, in which they and
their lawyers hid discoverable documents until the last possible moment. They then
dumped several thousand pages of documents on the opposing lawyer just before the
trial, knowing he and his staff could not possibly dig through them in time. Some judges
were angered by document dumps; others let them slide. Wade Lanier had just pulled off
a “witness dump,” a close cousin. Withhold the names of many of the potential
witnesses until the last moment, then hand them over along with a bunch of surplus