Jeffery Deaver - Mistress of Justice

Hunkered down behind two octogenarian trial buffs, Taylor watched him pace back and forth slowly.

Reece said, "Now, sir, you know I'm getting paid for asking you questions."

The witness blinked. "I -"

Reece laughed, "It's not a question. I'm just telling you that I'm getting paid to be here, and I assume you're getting paid to testify. But I don't think it's fair to ask you how much you're getting, if I'm not prepared to tell you how much I'm getting. And I'm not. Lawyers're overpaid anyway." Laughter filled the room. "So we'll just let it go at the fact that we're both professionals. Are we all together on that?"

"Yessir."

"Good."

The plaintiff's lawyers grew wary at this. One of the first ways cross-examining lawyers attack experts is to make them sound like mercenaries.

"Now, Doctor," Reece said, "let me ask you, how often do you testify at medical malpractice cases like this one?"

"Rarely."

"How rare would that be?"

The witness lifted his hand, "I've probably testified three or four times in my life. Only when I feel a terrible injustice has been done and -"

Reece held up his hand and, still smiling, said, "Maybe if we could just stick to answering my questions, please."

"The jury will disregard the witness's last sentence," the judge mumbled.

"So it's safe to say that you spend most of your time practicing medicine. Not testifying against other doctors."

"That's right."

"That's so refreshing, Doctor. I mean that It's clear you care about your patients."

"Helping patients is the most important thing in the world to me."

"I applaud that, sir And I welcome your appearance here – I mean that. Because these are very tricky technical matters that my friends on the jury and I have to wrestle with, and cooperative witnesses like you can make the issues clearer."

The witness laughed. "I have had a bit of experience."

"Let's talk about that, sir. Now, you practice internal medicine, correct?"

"That's correct."

"You're board-certified in internal medicine?"

"I am."

"And you have occasion to administer various drugs?"

"Oh, yessir."

"Would you say you have great experience administering them?"

"I would say so, sure."

"Those ways of administering them would include sublingual – that's under the tongue, right?"

"That's right."

Reece continued, "And rectally as well as administering injected medicines, like the sort that the plaintiff received."

"That's true."

"I don't want you to think I'm up to anything here, sir. You've testified that my client did something wrong in administering certain medicines and all I want to do is make it clear that your observations about what my client did are valid because of your expertise. We're all together on that?"

"All together, yessir."

"Good."

Taylor could see that the jury had brightened up. Something was happening. Reece was being nice to the witness. Shouldn't they be screaming at each other? The jury was confused and because of that they'd started paying attention.

She noticed something else. Though she hadn't seen him change his appearance, Reece's jacket, at some point, had become unbuttoned and in lifting his hand to straighten his hair he'd mussed it. He looked boyish. She thought of him suddenly as a young Southern lawyer – a hero in a John Grisham book.

The witness too had relaxed. He was less stiff, less cautious.

Taylor, though, thought that Reece had gone too far with the good-old-boy approach. The witness was looking good in the eyes of the jury, the credibility of his testimony was improving. By now, she reflected, her father would've cut the balls off this doctor and had him cowering on the stand.

Reece said, "Now, let me quote from the record as best I can." He squinted and recited, "'In March of last year a doctor from St Agnes treated a patient – Mr. Marlow there in the wheelchair, the plaintiff – who has arthritis and adrenal insufficiency with seventy milligrams of cortisone acetate in conjunction with one hundred milligrams of indomethacin. '"

"That's right."

"And you testified that you wouldn't have done that."

"Correct."

"Because of his preexisting ulcerous condition."

"Yes."

"But I've looked through his charts. There's no record of his having an ulcer."

The witness said, "I don't know what happened with the charts. But he told the doctors he had an ulcer. I was there I heard the exchange."

"He was in the emergency room," Reece said. "Generally a busy place, a lot of doctors trying to cope with all kinds of problems I've been in them myself – cut my thumb bad last year." Reece winced and smiled at the jury. "I'm a real klutz," he told them. Then back to the doctor, "So will you agree that it's possible that the person Mr. Marlow told about his ulcer wasn't the person who administered the drugs?"

"That doesn't -"

Reece smiled. "Please, sir."

"It's possible. But -"

"Please. Just the question."

Taylor saw that Reece was preventing the witness from reminding the jury that it didn't matter who knew before the injection because Dr. Morse had brought it to the staff's attention just after the injection, when there was still time to correct it, but the staff had ignored him.

"It's possible."

Reece let this sit for a moment. "Now, Dr. Morse, there's been a lot of talk in this trial about what is and is not an accepted level of medical treatment, right?"

Morse paused before answering, as if trying to figure out where Reece was going. He looked at his own lawyer then answered, "Some, I suppose."

"I'm thinking that if, as you say, you wouldn't've treated the patient with these medications then I assume you feel that St Agnes's treatment was below the standards of proper medical care?"

"Certainly."

Reece walked to a whiteboard in the corner of the courtroom, near the jury, and drew a thick line horizontally across it. "Doctor, let's say this is the standard-of-care line, all right?"

"Sure."

Reece drew a thin dotted line an inch below it. "Would you say that the level of care St Agnes provided in administering those drugs was this far below the standard level of care? Just a little bit below?"

Morse looked at his lawyer and was greeted with a shrug.

"No. It wasn't just a little bit below. They almost killed the man."

"Well." Reece drew another line, farther down. "This far?"

"I don't know."

Another line. "This far below?"

Dr. Morse said in a solemn voice, "It was very far below."

Reece drew another two lines then stopped writing. He asked, "Once you get below a certain level of the standard of care, well, how'd you describe that?"

Another uncertain look at his lawyer then the witness answered, "I'd say I'd guess I'd say it was malpractice."

"You'd characterize St Agnes's treatment of Mr. Marlow," Reece said in a sympathetic voice, "as malpractice."

"Well, yes, I would."

A murmur of surprise from several people in the courtroom. Not only was Reece befriending the witness but his cross-examination was having the effect of making the witness repeat over and over again that the hospital had made a mistake. He had even gotten the witness to characterize the staff's behavior as malpractice – a legal conclusion that no defense lawyer in the world would have accepted from a plaintiff's witness. Yet it had been Reece himself who elicited this opinion.

What was going on here? Taylor glanced at Burdick and saw him sitting forward, clearly troubled.

A dozen rows behind him Clayton's representative, Randy Simms, sat immobile though with a slight smile on his face.

The judge looked at Reece, opposing counsel looked at Reece.