The Charred Body
by Charles C. Parsons
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
Next, Chance called Hank Johnson who easily qualified as an expert witness in fire safety. Johnson explained that the manufacturer had drafted its wiring instructions for installers to assure that all apartments were never without a warning of smoke in their unit.
On cross-examination, Hicks asked Johnson. “That’s just aspirational, isn’t it? That’s something the manufacturer thinks would be nice but really doesn’t expect to happen?”
“No, Mr. Hicks. Those makers funded safety surveys that revealed that electric circuits in apartment buildings were often out of service. Many tenants are delinquent in paying their electric bills. The makers didn’t want a disabled detector anywhere because the other tenants would be exposed to a dangerous risk of harm.”
Ms. Cohen stiffened as she considered Johnson’s words. Hicks winced, then dropped glumly into his chair. Judge Penn shifted uncomfortably at the podium before announcing that he had questions for the witness.
“Mr. Johnson, even if the smoke detector had been operable that evening, there was no one in the apartment with the child, was there?
“No, sir, there wasn’t.”
With narrowed eyes, Judge Penn glared over the podium at the witness. “It’s really speculative whether a sounding detector would have saved that infant’s life, isn’t it?”
Johnson looked the judge directly in the eye. “Not at all, your honor. Safety studies have shown that a ten-minute warning is more than adequate to intervene and save lives.”
“What studies?” Penn grumbled, shaking his head.
Johnson leaned down and lifted his open briefcase. He withdrew a text and opened it. As he started to read, Penn interrupted him.
“Don’t read to me from some treatise,” he bellowed. “That’s hearsay. Close the book.”
Penn turned to the jury. “The jury will disregard the witness’s effort to inject hearsay into this trial.” He then turned back Johnson and snapped. “Thank you, sir. You’re dismissed.”
Penn rose suddenly and announced a brief recess. As the jury filed out, several jurors stepped aside to allow Ms. Cohen to move ahead of them. Later at a lunch break in the courtroom cafeteria, several of the jurors carried their trays to the table where she sat and joined her in conversation.
Late that afternoon, Chance called his economic expert to the witness stand. Dr. Richard Lawrence, an economics professor at a nearby university, was congenial. He welcomed his task of educating the jury into the murky dismal science of projecting future losses. He used standard economic treatises and life tables to compute the possible earnings of the deceased child then used a discount factor to reduce the future numbers to present dollars. He wrote on a flip chart in front of the seated jury that he’d computed the future losses of the deceased child to be $3.2 million. Ms. Cohen was busily writing on her notepad as Dr. Lawrence explained his computations.
On cross-examination, Hicks argued with Lawrence about the treatises he’d selected and the discount factor he’s used. However, Lawrence was unshakable, and Hicks ultimately sat down.
Once again, Judge Penn announced that he had questions. “Dr. Lawrence,” he said, “isn’t it laughable to suggest that this little urchin would have earned $3.2 million in his lifetime?”
Lawrence turned his neck and looked up respectfully at Judge Penn on the podium. “Your honor, this youngster was deprived of his opportunity to prove what he would have earned, I’m not saying that this amount is what he would have earned. What I’m saying is that the science demonstrates that this is what he could have earned had his life not been terminated.”
As Dr. Lawrence rose to leave, Ms. Cohen nodded warmly.
* * *
Judge Penn announced that he wanted to conduct the trial until 5:00 p.m. that day, which left about one hour more to fill.
In a ten-minute break before the next witness, Martin rested his elbow on the Plaintiff’s table and beamed at Chance. “I think you’ve won over Ms. Cohen. Who’s your next witness?”
Chance rubbed the back of his neck. “Here comes the moment of truth. It’s Yvonne.”
After the jury was seated, Chance called Yvonne Hawkins to the witness stand. Her voice trembled as she described leaving her son with her teen-aged daughter. She explained that she’d gone to a friend’s house to borrow money to pay the electric bill. At the defense table, Hicks smirked.
Facing the jury, Chance boldly demanded truth from his witness. “Come, come, Mrs. Hawkins, tell us about this friend. You did something immoral didn’t you?”
Yvonne covered her face with her hand. “I used very poor judgment,” she sobbed. “Something I deeply regret.”
I thought I saw tears well op in several juror’s eyes. Others sat stiffly, clumsily in their seats while Yvonne described returning to the apartment building and discovering her son was dead.
On cross-examination, Hicks bluntly crowed. “Madame, you chose adultery over caring for your child, didn’t you?’
I saw Ms. Cohen’s mouth fall open. Several jurors blinked and fell silent. Charles Hawkins suddenly bolted from his chair enraged. “That’s not true. Yvonne loved that child.”
Judge Penn banged his gavel, ordering Charles to sit down or he’d be sent to the bullpen, where other prisoners were held. I noticed that Jurors Number 6 and 10, two elderly women, cover their mouths, aghast at the heated events unfolding before them.
Hicks continued. “If you’d stayed home, your child would be alive now, wouldn’t he?”
“Who knows?” she replied. “Without a smoke alarm, I might be dead along with him.”
Hicks seemed to recoil, then lost his fervor. He frowned at Yvonne with disgust but shook his head. “No more questions.”
I urged Chance to counterattack Hicks’ poor presentation, pry out Yvonne’s love for her son. He shook his head; he’d press that line from Charles.
Penn ordered a brief recess. In the hallway outside the courtroom, Chance gestured as he spoke with Charles Hawkins. Charles nodded approvingly.
Back in the courtroom, Chance called Charles to the witness stand. “How long have you and Yvonne been married?”
“Eighteen years.”
“You have two children?
“Had two.” Charles corrected.
Charles explained that he had reluctantly moved his family into Shadow Oaks after he’d declared bankruptcy. “Yvonne and I were desperate. My plumbing business had failed mostly because of recurring complications from my spinal surgery.” He described his wife’s distress with the substandard nearby schools. “Once we moved in, she cursed the education around Shadow Oaks. She was determined that, for the good of our kids, our stay there would be short.”
Several of the juror shifted uncomfortably in the jury box.
Chance moved closer to the witness stand. “Why did you have spinal surgery?”
“An IED slammed into my lower back while I was on patrol in Afghanistan. I was evacuated to a military hospital where they inserted a titanium plate in place of two lumbar vertebrae. When I came back to Yvonne, our sex life was wrecked. Our son was conceived by artificial insemination.”
Charles held his head in frustration. “Despite my back, I was taking any job I could find, Trash hauling, delivery man, you name it, but I still couldn’t pay the bills. Yvonne never stopped being a loving mother, but I began to sense alienation. I was convinced that moving my family into those lousy quarters was destroying our marriage.”
Charles described leaving his daughter. “Tanya had always been a good baby-sitter. We had no idea of the danger with that electricity off.”
He wept as he described returning to his home and finding the dead child. He identified the photos of his burned-out apartment and the charred remains of his son which were received into evidence.
Judge Penn adjourned the trial for the day. Many of the jurors huddled around Ms. Cohen as they exited the courthouse.
The following morning, the city chose to offer no evidence or witnesses and instead rested its case. In his closing argument, Chance reiterated the facts and repeated that Yvonne and Charles’s failure to pay electrical bills on time was foreseeable. The predictability of such human laxness was why the manufacturers had drafted instructions to prevent their warning devices from ever being disabled. He stressed that Yvonne’s behavior that evening was between her and her husband. He urged them to reject the city’s stubborn effort to shift the blame for its reckless installation.
Hicks demanded the jury answer the question: “Where were the parents?” He argued that the Hawkins, who hadn’t paid their electric bill, were now trying to profit from the death of their son. He insisted. “Their claims for money damages are tainted by their own wrongdoing!”
Judge Penn read the instructions of law the jurors would follow, and the jury retired to the adjoining jury room to deliberate.
In the well of the court, Martin patted Chance’s shoulder. “You gave it your best effort. The jurors have a tough case to decide.”
Chance sat back down in his chair and pressed his head between his hands. For the next five hours, he remained there, glancing repeatedly at the courtroom clock as it wound down toward five p.m., the court closing time while the jury deliberated.
Minutes before five p.m., an elderly bailiff dressed in a brown uniform sitting outside the jury room rose when he heard a knock on the door. A juror inside passed a sheet of paper to him. The bailiff nodded to the lawyers in the courtroom that the jurors had reached a verdict.
The bailiff notified the judge. Moments later, Judge Penn, robe flapping, bustled into the courtroom and ascended to the podium. Penn grunted as he read the verdict sheet then directed the bailiff to seat the jurors in the jury box to formally take the verdict for the record.
Penn’s face was red, and as though involuntarily, his shoulders twitched as he turned to the jury. In a pained voice, he asked the foreman to rise and announce the verdict. Ms Cohen, in a white turtleneck shirt beneath a plaid sportscoat stood up and announced.
“We the jury find in favor of the plaintiff’s estate and award the sum of One Million Six Hundred Thousand Dollars in compensatory damages against the District of Columbia.”
Penn. still shaking, asked if all the jurors agreed with the verdict, and when they did, he dismissed them.
Rising uneasily to leave, Judge Penn peered at Hicks. “I assume the District will be filing a motion for a new trial within the next ten days.”
Hicks smiled and nodded.
* * *
Over the next week, Chance and Martin pondered the jury verdict, vacillating between joy and sorrow. The jury had awarded just half the economic loss and granted nothing for pain and suffering for the child. The verdict was a compromise, neither excessive nor penurious.
Martin praised Chance for taking a difficult case and winning it. Ten days later, Chance sat slumped at his desk as he read the city’s motion for a new trial. Deep vertical furrows formed in his forehead as he despaired of a coming disaster.
On the fourteenth day after the verdict, Chance and I were seated at the conference table drafting our opposition to the motion. Martin bounded into our office waving a copy of the Washington Post. His eyes were wide, his speech jubilant. “Penn won’t be deciding that motion.” He shoved a copy of the Post obituaries under our noses. Penn had passed away from a massive stroke the night before.
Martin plopped down in a chair across the table. “The court commissioner will reassign the motion to another judge. Any new judge will see the jury denied full damages and conclude the verdict was a rebuke to the plaintiffs. No way will he order a new trial. Maybe it’s bad manners, but this calls for a drink.”
Copyright © 2023 by Charles C. Parsons
