Paul Goldstein - A Patent Lie

Phan rose. “We'll be seeing you again.”

This time the bluff was so absurd that Seeley laughed. “Not if I see you first.”

Palmieri was at his desk in the neat white office working at his laptop. Seeley lifted the Chronicle off the corner of the desk. “Did you talk with Phan?”

“Friday afternoon,” Palmieri said. “After Gail Odum's piece came out.”

Seeley returned the paper to the desk. “This guy Baptiste is going to implicate Dusollier.”

“Is any of this going to splash onto our client?”

Seeley said, “Phan hinted at it, but he's a cop, and that's what cops do. Did you tell him anything about Vaxtek's part in the collusion?”

“And get disbarred?”

“What was Pearsall's part in it?”

Palmieri pushed back from the desk, but his eyes remained open. In this crisp pink-and-white striped shirt and dark tie, he was as collected as ever. “I finished my grieving for Bob. This doesn't change anything.”

“He was part of it, wasn't he?”

“Bob and Emil Thorpe,” Palmieri said. “Warshaw and the higher-ups in Switzerland made the deal, but Bob and Emil executed it.”

So Leonard had not been lying. “I wouldn't think that Pearsall was the kind of person who'd do that.”

“He wasn't,” Palmieri said. “It was one of those drawn-out negotiations where, when you're in the middle of it, it looks like you're just making one small tactical decision after another. Only later, when the negotiations are over and you've moved on to other things, you realize you've made a moral choice. We didn't discover Steinhardt's double bookkeeping, Emil's people did. Emil tried to use it to get Vaxtek to drop the case. But one of our associates had just found the record of Lily Warren's visit to Steinhardt's lab. That gave each side a lock on the other. Bob suggested that the parties settle, and Emil said he'd talk with his client. That's when the two companies came up with the idea of going through the motions of a trial, and getting a judicial stamp of validity on the patent. It didn't seem unreasonable to Bob at the time, so he went along.”

But, Seeley thought, if Pearsall was involved in the collusion, why would Dusollier have to arrange for his murder?

Palmieri said, “I can't understand why Bob had to be involved. All he had to do was what any trial lawyer does for his client-prove that the patent was valid. It was Emil who had to pull his punches.”

Seeley said, “Someone had to tell Thorpe where the soft spots were in Vaxtek's case so that he could avoid them.” Seeley wondered what Palmieri's part was. “Pearsall didn't tell you about the collusion, did he?”

Palmieri shook his head. “A couple of months into depositions, I figured out what was going on. Questions that didn't get asked. Requests for admissions and interrogatories that didn't get served.”

“And you confronted Pearsall?”

“Too many people I know have died of AIDS for me to be responsible for any more. I wouldn't repeat this to the lieutenant, but I could have killed Bob myself, I was so furious.”

“What did Pearsall say?”

“Bob said I should stop working on the case, but I told him I was going to go to the state bar, and if they didn't do anything, I'd go to the press.”

“But instead,” Seeley said, “Pearsall went to Warshaw and told him that the firm was withdrawing from the case.”

“Worse than that.” Tears suddenly filled Palmieri's eyes. “He told Warshaw that if Vaxtek didn't drop the lawsuit, he was going to the press with the story. I don't think he forgave himself for being part of this.” Palmieri wiped his eyes with his fingers. “So he got killed instead of me.”

“You were very brave.”

Palmieri shook his head. “If I were brave, I would have gone to the press myself.”

“With what? Your suspicions, and what Pearsall told you? No one would have believed you.”

“After Bob was killed, I could have gone to the police.”

“You were braver than that. Think of all those things you did to try to sabotage Vaxtek's case.”

“They weren't very effective, were they?”

“We got a hung jury, didn't we? I'd say, if there's a hero anywhere in this mess, it's you.” And, Seeley told himself, Lily.

“It's nice of you to say that, but-”

“You still have work to do,” Seeley said. He told Palmieri about the meeting in Judge Farnsworth's chambers, and explained how the judge was effectively forcing Vaxtek to license AV/AS on reasonable terms to any company that wanted to manufacture it. “You get to close the deal, Chris. Does the firm have an intellectual property transactions group? You'll need someone to draft a license agreement.”

“Sure.”

“Have them put together a license for Barnum to review. Once he's approved it, send a copy to Emil and get it to the judge by Friday.” The party that prepares the first draft of a contract has the upper hand in the negotiations that follow and, after what he'd done to his client in court, Seeley owed it that much.

“What about the royalty rate?”

“Get Nicolas Cordier to fax you a declaration of what he thinks a reasonable royalty should be. Get one from your friend Phil Driscoll, too. Use the lower number.”

“And if Vaxtek thinks it's too low?”

“Tell them the judge won't approve anything higher.” Seeley nodded at the laptop. “And you can turn that thing off. There won't be a retrial. No appeals. The case is over.”

Palmieri turned the screen toward Seeley. It was filled with blue sky, green waters, a white beach, and a jungle of palm trees. “Maui. My partner and I are going for a couple of weeks.”

Seeley forgot that Palmieri had been working on the case from the beginning, long before the trial itself began, through unending days of depositions, document review, and legal research. He didn't look it, but he had to be exhausted. Seeley felt a flood of affection for this lawyer who had, by himself, attempted to destroy Vaxtek's case.

Palmieri came from behind the desk. “It's been good working with you, Mike. I never thought I'd meet a trial lawyer as good as Bob Pearsall.”

“It was a privilege to work with you.” Seeley offered his hand, and resisted the impulse to hug Palmieri, or even to touch his shoulder as a way of embracing what they'd accomplished together. “I couldn't have done this without you.”

Palmieri's eyes didn't let Seeley go. He seemed unembarrassed by the quiet intimacy of the exchange. Finally, he withdrew his hand. “I learned a lot from you.”

“Like what?”

“How hard it can be to lose a case.”

Seeley said, “Only when you're trying.”

“You have great timing, Seeley.”

For some reason, he liked the sound of Lily calling him by his last name.

“I don't have to be back in the lab until Sunday afternoon. That gives us three days for ourselves.”

The night was clear, and from the chaises on Lily's terrace they could see all the way to where a procession of trawlers, their lights strung like Christmas trees, crossed the dark horizon.

“We need to talk about what happened.”

“You're the silent one,” Lily said. “I don't mind.”

“You had a lot of courage, going to the newspaper.”

“Not really. Five minutes after you left, I knew I didn't have a choice.”

“Why did the story take so long to come out?”

“You're the most impatient person I know!”

“What do you mean?”

“Gail had to check facts and give Vaxtek and St. Gall a chance to return her phone calls. Alan, too.”

She rested her fingers on the back of his hand. “You better stick to law. You don't have the patience to make it as a scientist.”

Seeley said, “Neither does Steinhardt. He couldn't wait for his own results, so he stole yours.”