Service of process was made to all named defendants on June 15th. That set the deadline for all defendants’ responses as July 6th, assuming none of them decided to just let it run late and pay whatever fine the judge mandated. Or, rather, that would’ve been the case. But we lucked out.
We were assigned to Judge Marcus Leroy Friedman.
For those with the good fortune to never have sat before a judge, it was important to remember something: the judge both did and didn’t decide your fate. Until the trial started, and again during the post-trial paperwork stage, judges were the end-all be-all, and if you didn’t like their decision, you’d best make it clear in writing if you want to try and fight it later.
But during a jury trial? Well, toss out the nomenclature. The judge was not judging anything. The jury was. For the duration of a jury trial, it was better to consider the judge as a referee, and the jurors as a panel of game show hosts, each responsible for giving you a pass/fail score.
Or if that didn’t make sense, you could instead think of it this way: a trial was a circus. The jury was the audience, the lawyers were all clowns, and the judge was the ringmaster desperately trying to keep the antics to a minimum.
And before anybody asks, yes, I was including myself as one of those ‘clowns’.
Now, why was all of this important?
Because Judge Friedman was a special breed of judge. He wasn’t just a former U.S. Attorney … actually, fine, he was just a former U.S. Attorney. But the thing that set him apart and made him a godsend for our case was what types of cases he’d prosecuted: uncompetitive business practices, union busting, wage theft, and the like. Those cases had given him a nickname amongst the D.C. legal community.
Judge Friedman, The Whistleblower’s Best Friend.
Now, that wasn’t to say that it would all be smooth sailing from here on out. We were still going to have to fight tooth and nail for every inch of progress we made, especially since we were suing some wealthy opponents who all had their own full legal teams. And while I had Julio and Fatima on hand, along with any free members of the practice group on call, Bierman Viskie & Schotz was a mid-size firm — on the larger end of a mid-size firm, but our attorney roster was still in the middle triple digits. The defendants, meanwhile, threw down hundreds of millions on the regular. Having the NMR on our side was the only thing stopping them from just forcing us into a settlement through sheer mass of paper and ink.
Well. That and the good judge, who was quick to show just how lucky we were to have pulled him.
Because today was July 8th, every answer to our filed complaint had come in on-time, and we were already sitting down for the initial status conference.
We’d narrowed down our lawsuit to four parties: the building’s owners, the property management company they outsourced to, the construction company that had built the apartment building in the first place, and the building inspector who’d signed off on everything being up to code.
Three of them were corporations, complete with attorneys on retainer. They filed into the room, black-and-navy suit after black-and-navy suit, all of them looking simultaneously expensive and shabby. It was easy to notice once you knew what to look for — watch the shoulders, the sleeves, and the cuffs. Too many of these idiots bought suits that looked good when standing up, but God awful when sitting down, which was a pretty obvious tell that they cared about image over substance.
These were the attorneys you paid for a “shock and awe, settle ASAP” approach — kings of the first impression and initial negotiation, but too hyper-specialized to be good at much else. Maybe they’d been good in a courtroom a decade or two ago, but the last person they’d spoken to that even resembled a jury was probably a private arbitrator — and one they pre-selected, to boot.
The last defendant we’d sued was a government employee, who came in accompanied by D.C. Housing Authority’s internal attorney-advisor. With any luck, the attorney would encounter a conflict of interest and leave partway through proceedings, making the inspector more likely to help us if we agreed to stop pursuing damages from him.
Was it a bit scummy to do that? Well, maybe, sure. But the strategy was sound, and a bit of grime now was more than worth it.
We all stared at each other from either side of the conference table. Facing the door, Julio, Fatima, Mrs. Banks, and I sat, the four of us at the far end of the table close to where the judge would be, leaving a good twelve seats completely empty. Our opponents, meanwhile, took up all but two chairs between them all, and kept shooting each other angry looks, muttered curses passing between the corporate plaintiffs’ representatives.
Thankfully, we weren’t left to stew in this for long. The clock ticked over to 8:15am, and I heard the door handle turn in that same instant, ears perking up at the sound. It wasn’t the door behind the defendants’ side of the table; it was another one, off to the side of the courthouse’s conference room.
I stood, and thankfully, the three with me got the hint and rose with me. The door creaked open with the groan of old wood, and in stepped Judge Friedman, the sight of which had the defendants’ various lawyers hurriedly pulling their clients to their feet.
“While I appreciate it, there’s no need to stand on my account,” the judge said, amusement in his voice as he approached the table and pulled out his chair. “Believe me, those chairs on this floor? Mm, mm, no we do not like that sound. Go on, it’s alright, take a seat, let me settle in and we’ll get things started!”
The Honorable Marcus Leroy Friedman was an older black gentleman whose general appearance I could only describe as “everyone’s favorite grandpa”. A full shock of white hair and an equally frosty beard graced his features, drawing attention away from the wrinkles gracing a brow too often furrowed in anger. Give his beard a few months, slap a red suit on him, and he could pull off a mean Santa Claus.
He wasn’t wearing his judge’s robe for this simple conference, likely having left it in his chambers to shrug on before court in just under two hours. Instead, he wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt with a lively pattern on it, paired with khaki cargo shorts and sandals that wouldn’t look out of place on a fishing boat. He’d carried a big ol’ travel mug filled to the brim with… I took a discrete sniff. It smelled like something between coffee and chocolate? I’d have to email his clerk or secretary asking what it was, because I wanted some.
“Right, let’s see what we’ve got here…” Judge Friedman sat down in his chair, pulled it closer to the table, set down his big ol’ mug after taking a delightfully noisy slurp, and then flipped open the planner he’d pulled out from under his other arm. “Let me just make sure everyone is here in some capacity. Mrs. Destiny Irene Banks?”
“Present,” my client said, exactly as I’d suggested.
“Excellent. And these are your lawyers, I take it?” The judge motioned to the three of us, his gaze lingering on me for barely a moment, to his credit.
“We are,” I said, and pulled a carefully paperclipped set of papers from my folio before handing it to the judge. “Here is a copy of our Notices of Appearance for convenience, your Honor.”
“Unnecessary, but I do appreciate the gesture,” he said, accepting the papers regardless. “Very well. Now, for the defendants…”
And then he went down the list. William C. Smith & Co., represented by its executive vice president, Mr. Harrison Smith. Property Management Solutions, Inc., represented by its chief management officer, Mr. Richard Jones. Columbia Construction & Contracting LLC, represented by its managing member, Mr. Thomas Johnson.
And last but not least, Mr. Miguel Arroyo, a D.C. Housing Authority property inspector.
“Well now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a look here at the Complaint and the Answers.” Judge Friedman pulled those papers out from the inside cover of his planner, and spread them out before him. “Defendants disagreed with pretty much all of your major factual contentions here, counsel. One thing they raised that I am curious about: why the decision to not file against the NMR, here?”
The question was addressed squarely at me, I could tell. The judge wanted to know: did I refuse to sue the superheroes because of some lingering sympathies towards them, because I was a Moonshot myself, or because I had a valid reason for doing so?
“During the course of our pre-filing due diligence, we found no reason to believe that the NMR or Barricade himself were at fault here, sir.” I pointed towards the copy of our Complaint. “I believe we mentioned this in the Complaint somewhere between… I want to say Points 33 and 37.”
“And so you did!” Judge Friedman offered a smile, and I noticed he hadn’t once moved to actually verify that the Complaint said what I claimed. “But I always want to hear that kind of thing from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Always more confident in the answers when I know nobody’s leaning over your shoulder to critique it.”
At that moment, somebody on the defense’s side of the table cleared their throat. It was the attorney for WCS, whose horn-rimmed glasses sat slightly askew on his face. I frowned, trying to remember his name and what firm he worked for, but I also didn’t really care quite yet. I didn’t recognize him on sight, and that meant he wasn’t a big enough name to be an immediate threat.
“Actually, your Honor, the defense does plan to involve the NMR in this matter via impleader.”
The judge snorted. Then he chuckled and leaned forward in his chair, clasping his hands as he favored the defense attorney with a wry grin.
“Son, you’ve never sued the Moonies before, have you?”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“I’m sorry?” the defense attorney said. Judge Friedman’s grin grew at his response, and I couldn’t help the amused flick of my tail.
For the uninitiated, ‘I’m sorry?’ was lawyer-speak for, ‘the fuck did you just say?’, which, pro-tip: the polite ways of calling someone an idiot were only usable on laymen. Judges knew them too.
“Counsel, would you like to do the honors?” Judge Friedman looked at me when he said that, and I offered him a nod before deliberately not facing the defense attorney, even as I let a positively predatory smirk cross my lips.
“Honey, you wanna sue one of us, you gotta check in with the Court of Federal Claims first.” I kept my tone casual, and made a show of giving him only the barest glance before instead turning to inspect my nails. Although, ooh, actually, I probably needed to redo my nail polish. Hmm, what shade to go with next time… teal? Teal. “They’ve got first dibs on most cases against current and former NMR, plus they’ve got their own rules, their own procedures, and a different burden of proof than you’re used to. Did you even look that up before writing your complaint?” I looked up briefly, noting how lost all but one of the attorneys on the other side looked, and lowered my ears in amusement. “The thousand-yard stares tell me that, no, you didn’t.”
“And beyond that, you don’t have the standing!” Judge Friedman added. “Face it, the superhero didn’t cause your clients any harm. Hell, you should be lucky he’s not suing you too.”
“I… see,” Crooked Glasses said, making a vain attempt to fix how said glasses sat on his face before giving up again. “In that case, my client requests an additional twenty-one days to file an amended Answer to the Complaint.”
“As does mine.”
“My client also requests that.”
Judge Friedman turned to the one attorney who hadn’t jumped in on his client’s behalf.
“Counsel?”
“No, your Honor.” He shook his head. “Just cross out the lines of the Answer suggesting impleader.”
“There you have it,” the judge said. “Request denied. And since you’re all so eager to add deadlines to your schedules, let’s turn to discovery, shall we?”
Like I’d said earlier: we lucked out big time pulling Judge Friedman.
“Now, I'm used to plaintiffs just rushing to file as soon as they can, but that's not the case here. What's more, looking at their Complaint, they've got quite a few ducks in a row. I say that means we can keep this discovery schedule short and sweet! What does everybody say to…” The judge looked at his calendar, and flipped a few pages. “How about first week of November for pretrial motions, jury selection the Monday after Thanksgiving, and wrapping this all up by Christmas?”
“Plaintiff has no objections,” I said. Well, yes, I did have an objection, but from past experience with Judge Friedman, I knew it wasn’t going to matter.
“Your Honor, with all due respect!” Which we all knew meant ‘are you fucking insane?’, but I had a feeling these people were too used to settling things before the status conference to know that you do not say that to the judge. “Four months isn’t nearly enough time to get through discovery, not with some of the entities involved!”
“Oh, really?”
Ooh. Ooh, I knew that tone. The way someone’s voice just dips at the end, challenging the person they’re addressing, giving them the barest opening to walk back whatever it is they just said.
Unfortunately for him, Crooked Glasses didn’t catch it.
“By my reckoning, the plaintiff has gone to the substantial effort of assembling every document she could have had access to, which is half the time of discovery already handled. I was aiming for seven to eight months, but if half the work is already done, then I should think four would be sufficient,” the judge said. “Which means that keeping my case calendar running is entirely contingent on your clients. And three of them were all in business together! It shouldn’t be much trouble for each of them to go into their own records and produce their respective copies, or sit for independently scheduled depositions, now should it? The only reason I can see as to why you would want more time is that you wanted to make sure all of them matched.
“And that being the case, let me make this clear now.” Judge Friedman unclasped his hands and laid them on the table, left flat, right clasped around a gavel that wasn’t there. For those familiar with the man, this was how we knew he was not going to suffer interruption. “I do not just want the most recent copies of your documents. I want the current version and all backups that exist, complete with timestamps.”
“And what if—”
“Do not bullshit me.” Judge Friedman rapped his knuckles on the table to punctuate his statement. “If your clients do not provide backups, then I expect their respective Technology chiefs to stand in front of me and explain in excruciating detail how and why they do not exist. Do I make myself clear?”
The attorney from the Housing Authority, the one representing Mr. Arroyo, chose this moment to clear his throat and half-raise a hand to draw attention.
“Actually, your Honor, I don’t foresee the Housing Authority managing to review all of the material and conduct our own part of discovery in that amount of time,” he said, a tad sheepishly. “We’re booked solid through the end of September.”
“If I may?” I took the chance to interject, and Judge Friedman gave me a nod. “Assuming that counsel for Mr. Arroyo is provided with copies of everything as we go, would you be able to take that and fill in what little is left in October and November?”
“Bit of a stretch, but I think it’s doable,” the government attorney said, checking his calendar. “Of course, this assumes nothing comes up that affects the Housing Authority’s ability to represent Mr. Arroyo.”
For his part, the defendant looked fairly aggrieved, but not ashamed. That gave me hope, if I was being honest. I was getting a good feeling about him, and had a feeling we’d be amending our Complaint to exclude him in a month or two.
“Very well, two in favor. Any objections?” Judge Friedman asked the attorneys for the other three defendants. But in reality, he wasn’t asking. He was letting them know how it was going to be.
And this time, they knew better than to take the dare.
“Splendid!” The judge took the lack of response as confirmation, wrote something down in his planner, and closed it. “Ladies and gentlemen, I expect to hear that discovery is complete by November 25, and look forward to seeing all of you in my courtroom on the first of December to argue pre-hearing motions, assuming there are any.”
Translation: he knew there would be, and was setting the deadline before any of us could try anything.
“Very well, if there is nothing else, I will head back to my chambers.” Judge Friedman stood, and gave the lot of us a conspiratorial look. “Ah, don’t feel the need to show yourselves out quite yet. The conference room is booked until half past eleven.” And then, without even giving us a chance to offer so much as a ‘good day’, the judge left.
And in the wake of his departure, relative silence reigned. Oh, to be sure, there was some muttering from the other side of the table, but there were also enough overlapping conversations that I couldn’t pick out any one discussion, not even with ears as good as mine.
The muttering did cease, though, and it appeared that Crooked Glasses, the attorney for WCS, had volunteered to take the lead. Or been volunteered, maybe.
“Mrs. Banks.” The defense attorney leaned forward in his chair and laid his clasped hands on the table, in what was a clear and deliberate imitation of Judge Friedman’s posture. “As it stands, we are currently, ah, set to revisit old traumas at what I can only presume will be a rather… difficult time, for you. And so, I have to ask: is there anything we can do to help prevent that and bring things to a close in a less confrontational manner?”
I’d started writing the moment he opened his mouth, so I had the message written out and underlined for emphasis well before Destiny needed to respond. I slid my legal pad over to her and tapped the page with my pencil. She took the hint and started to read, thankfully.
THEY WANT YOU TO SETTLE.
THEY’RE TRYING TO AVOID TRIAL.
THAT CHOICE IS YOURS ALONE.
PLAY BALL, OR DON’T, BUT NO WAFFLING.
“You said ‘anything’?” Destiny asked, a thread of intent coloring her tone.
I was thankful that nobody on their side of the table was familiar enough with me to read my body language, because the flick of my ears gave away my amusement. I knew that tone of voice. It was the exact greedy lilt that let scammers around the world know they’d cornered an easy mark.
“Anything within our power.” Mr. Smith spoke up now, taking over for Crooked Glasses (who was now giving him the stink-eye). “There’s little that would be—”
“Can you give me my boys back?”
Destiny’s interruption cut the wind from the corpo’s sails.
“... I’m sorry?” Mr. Smith asked, blinking in surprise. The rest of the people on the other side of the table subtly shifted away from the WCS contingent, not wanting to be caught in the blast zone.
“My sons.” Destiny’s voice was firm now, all the false obsequiousness gone. “Can you bring my sons back to life?”
“I, ma’am—”
Crooked Glasses raised a hand into Mr. Smith’s field of vision, whereupon he took the hint and fell silent. The attorney took a deep breath and focused his gaze onto my client.
“Mrs. Banks, with all due respect, my client can offer—”
“You think I want your money?”
Destiny stood from her chair. Every single person on the other side of the table, with the exception of Mr. Arroyo, pulled away at the motion.
“My boys are dead. They’re dead because y’all a buncha greedy fucks what couldn’t say no to another goddamn dollar that weren’t yours. And you seriously think I’m about to take your dirty money and just leave? Fuck no! Boy, there ain’t shit you can do to make me go away.
“Cause y’all ain’t got nothin’ I want but the blood in your veins.”
They had no response. None whatsoever. Not even a peep. There was nothing they would dare say to that. And we weren’t about to wait, either.
Julio, Fatima, and I stood to join Mrs. Banks. I put away my legal pad and pen, and once I started heading for the door, the rest of the group followed.
None of us said a word until we were back outside, and walking through the parking lot.
“So what now?” Destiny asked.
“Now, we make their lives miserable,” I told her. “We put them under the microscope, turn the screws, and force them to give us all their secret little goodies.”
“Good.”
Destiny’s expression twisted into a vicious, gleeful snarl.
“I doubt this’ll make ‘em hurt like I did. But damn if it won’t feel good to watch them squirm.”
