George Higgins - A change of gravity

Mindful that United States Attorneys with hopes of future federal judgeships are ill-advised to discharge troublesome assistants whose families' political contributions have been generous enough to bring them invitations to state dinners at the White House, the Chief Assistant US Attorney in Boston had settled for excluding him from civil matters and minor criminal cases. "For you this's not a promotion; it's purely damage-control, the only way I can get any use out of you. We now know your only chance of winning is by making sure the defendant's someone the jury'll dislike more'n they've come to dislike you, bite clean through their lower lips and convict him by default. Otherwise they'll ignore the evidence and acquit the bastard, just to give you the finger."

"Geoffrey Cohen, counsel for Ambrose Merrion," Cohen said. "Mister Merrion is also present."

"And also for the record, before we get started here," the judge said.

"Several years ago Attorney Cohen was my personal lawyer, providing excellent counsel during my divorce. Mister Bissell, I take it you and your superiors in the US Attorney's office in Boston are aware of this?"

"We were aware of that, your Honor," Bissell said. "We perceive no potential problem of prejudice or bias inhering in your past attorney-client relationship with Mister Cohen."

"And so I take it the US Attorney's office does not wish me to recuse myself from this proceeding, voluntarily, as I am willing to do is that right?"

"That is correct," Bissell said.

The judge exhaled. "Sorry to hear it," she said.

Bissell frowned. "Beg pardon, your Honor?"

"Oh, nothing," she said. "I'm not in a very good mood today. This morning we had a civil case unexpectedly settle. Ordinarily this'd be a development I'd welcome, parties finally able to come to an agreement without taking up any more of the court's time; too bad they couldn't've done it sooner. But this one was different. Wrongful Death action, but quite unusual. This was the dead parachutist.

Remember him? The landscaper from Suffield, Nicholas Hardigrew. Summer before last. Took off from Barnes Airport, one of a party with four other sky divers, planning to jump over Conway. He was experienced; over the course of several years he'd done it a good many times without even spraining an ankle. As far as anyone seems to know, everything went fine, according to the book. He was third in the chain at the door, so two people saw him leave the plane and drop clear of the tail wing That's when you're supposed to pull the ripcord. When he went out his hands were in the proper position. But for some reason his chute didn't open.

"The case was about the reason. His family's theory as the plaintiffs was straight res ipsa loquitur. They don't know what went wrong with the parachute, whether it was some defect in the chute itself or the person who packed it didn't do it properly. They do know and'd proven, at least to my satisfaction that he was a veteran sport parachutist.

People who'd jumped with him considered him highly skilled. He knew all the pre-flight and in-flight precautions, proper safety procedures.

He was famous for being meticulous, going through the pre-jump checklist, every item double-checked. They noticed nothing different this time, can't explain why his chute didn't open. Dead men tell no tales, but for his family his death speaks eloquently; somewhere there was a defect. Someone had to've been negligent.

"The defendants are the parachute manufacturer and the technicians at the airport who packed it. They can't account for it any other way than by saying it must've been suicide. The packing's a two-person procedure: one packs and another inspects. Both of the people who prepared his equipment said it passed muster. He was face-down when he hit on a hard-packed clay surface.

His thumb and fingers were still in the D-ring. The chute took the same terminal-velocity impact he did; that probably affected it.

Allowing for that, the people who inspected it after the incident said they couldn't find any evidence that it'd been tampered with since it left the packers' custody. They found no indication of pre-impact defect of materials or workmanship; no fatigue-condition of components, wear and tear, before the impact, that prevented it from deploying.

"Obviously it hadn't. The glaring question is Why. The investigators said they found no indication that it hadn't been activated properly, but they couldn't rule that out. He might've had a sudden cramp in his hand so he was unable to pull the ripcord at the precise moment he planned; caused him to panic, and freeze. They can't tell. Maybe the ripcord snagged a little, gave him more resistance than he was used to, and that made him panic and freeze. Again, no way to tell. Maybe, maybe he didn't pull the cord and never meant to; the fatal defect was the human condition. As far as the defense experts can see, everything else was just fine.

"The defense team put on one eyewitness, another experienced parachutist, fourth in the chain that day. She said she could see him part of the way down, until she pulled her ripcord and her chute opened, but he just kept on free-falling. She doesn't think he ever tried to pop his. She saw no sign he was having a problem or struggling with it. She said it looked to her like he just kept his hands on the pack in front of him, head sort of bowed, "looking down, almost as though he'd been praying." He went by the other divers who'd gone out ahead of him; since their chutes were open and his wasn't, he was now dropping much faster than they were. Their depositions said they didn't have time to see much, and anyway they were too shocked and horrified to've noticed much anyway. He had goggles on and they were too far away to see whether he had his eyes open.

"Nobody on either side ever really addressed the issue that I would have thought to be central to the case. Why was he washed out of Jump School? He never told anyone, so far as we know. He always said he didn't know. The Army lost his records in a fire some years ago. Now no one could track down the people in his unit. Did someone there think maybe the kid had a death wish? Or was the reason for washing him out so insignificant, and so long ago, nobody even remembers? Well for sure, no one knows now.

"So there we had it: either it was a mysterious accident and we'll never know what caused it, or else this successful, healthy, well-to-do family-man, real zest for life, movie-star good-looking and very well-liked, apparently happy, killed himself for some reason we'll never know.

"This one I wanted to go to the jury. Then at least we would've had a six-person consensus of which explanation's the likeliest. Of course they might not've been able to dope it out either; would've come back reporting a deadlock. But evidently both sides, after hearing each other's case go in and watching how the jury seemed to be taking it, came to the same conclusion: letting the jury decide it was taking more risk than they wanted. The defendants pre-trial offered sixty-five thousand; how they arrived at that figure I do not pretend to know. The family made the customary multi-million-dollar demand. In the pre-trial conferences I had the clear impression that they'd settle only if they got the whole pot in the defendants' liability insurance pool, three million dollars. So the trial accomplished something for both sides. The family gets a million-one that they wouldn't have if they hadn't sued, around eight hundred thousand after they pay their lawyer. And the underwriters, after they pay their experts and lawyers, get to keep about a million and a half they might've lost.

"That leaves us with a third mystery: If all of the evidence'd come in, what would the jury've decided? Now we'll never know that answer either. I feel cheated. I suppose I'm being childish. I want life to be neat, with clear cut answers. Never mind about the money: I want to know why Nick Hardigrew died. But life isn't neat, so I don't.