Title:Ford County
Author(s): John Grisham
Publisher(s): Doubleday Publishing Group
Pages: 320
Year: 2009
Format: EPUB
Language: English
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After seventeen years of grinding out a living in a law practice that, for some forgotten reason, had gradually been reduced to little more than bankruptcy and divorce work, it was astonishing, even years later, that one phone call could change so much. As a busy lawyer who handled the desperate problems of others, Mack Stafford had made and received all sorts of life-altering phone calls: calls to initiate or settle divorces; calls to pass along grim court rulings on child custody; calls to inform honest men that they would not be repaid. Unpleasant calls, for the most part. He had never thought about the possibility that one call could so quickly and dramatically lead to his own divorce and bankruptcy.
It came during lunch on a bleak and dreary and otherwise slow Tuesday in early February, and because it was just after noon, Mack took it himself. Freda, the secretary, had stepped out for an errand and a sandwich, and since his little firm employed no one else, Mack was left to guard the phone. As things evolved, the fact that he was alone was crucial. If Freda had answered it, there would have been questions, and lots of them. In fact, most of what followed would not have happened had she been at her post in the reception area near the front door of a little shop known as: Law Offices of Jacob McKinley Stafford, LLC.
After the third ring, Mack grabbed the phone on his desk in the back and offered the usual, brusque «Law office.» He received on average fifty calls a day, most from warring spouses and disgruntled creditors, and he had long since developed the habit of disguising his voice and withholding his name when forced to take calls unfiltered by Freda. He hated answering the phone cold, but he also needed the business. Like every other lawyer in Clan-ton, and there were plenty, he never knew when the next call might be the big one, the big catch, the big case that could lead to a handsome fee and maybe even a way out. Mack had been dreaming of such a phone call for more years than he cared to admit.
And on this cold winter day, with a slight chance of snow in the air, the call finally arrived.
A male voice with a different accent, from somewhere up north, replied, «Yes, Mr. Mack Stafford, please.»
The voice was too polished and too far away to worry him, so he replied, «This is Mack.»
«Mr. Mack Stafford, the attorney?»
«Correct. Who$prime;s calling?»
«My name is Marty Rosenberg, and I$prime;m with the Durban & Lang firm in New York.»
«New York City?» Mack asked, and much too quickly. Of course it was New York City. Though his practice had never taken him anywhere near the big city, he certainly knew of Durban & Lang. Every lawyer in America had at least heard of the firm.
«That$prime;s correct. May I call you Mack?» The voice was quick but polite, and Mack suddenly had a visual of Mr. Rosenberg sit$prime; ting in a splendid office with art on the walls and associates and secretaries scurrying about tending to his needs. Yet in the midst of such power he wanted to be friendly. A wave of insecurity swept over Mack as he looked around his dingy little room and wondered if Mr. Rosenberg had already decided he was just an-other small-town loser because he answered his own phone.
«Sure. And I$prime;ll just call you Marty.»
«Great.»
«Sorry, Marty, to grab the phone, but my secretary stepped out for lunch.» It was important for Mack to clear the air and let this guy know that he was a real lawyer with a real secretary.
«Yes, well, I forgot that you$prime;re an hour behind us,» Marty said with a trace of contempt, the first hint that perhaps they were separated by far more than just a simple hour.
«What can I do for you?» Mack said, seizing control of the conversation. Enough of the small talk. Both were busy, important attorneys. His mind was in overdrive as he tried to think of any case, any file, any legal matter that could conceivably merit interest from such a large and prestigious law firm.
«Well, we represent a Swiss company that recently purchased most of the Tinz,o group out of South Korea. You$prime;re familiar with Tinz,o?»
«Of course,» Mack replied quickly, while his mind racked its memory for some recollection of Tinzo. It did indeed ring a bell, though a very distant one.
«And according to some old Tinzo records, you at one time represented some loggers who claimed to have been injured by defective chain saws manufactured by a Tinzo division in the Philippines.»
Oh, that Tinzo! Now Mack was in the game. Now he remembered, though the details were still not at his fingertips. The cases were old, stale, and almost forgotten because Mack had tried his best to forget them.
«Terrible injuries,» he said anyway. Terrible as they might have been, they had never been so grievous as to prompt Mack to actually file suit. He$prime;d signed them up years earlier but lost interest when he couldn$prime;t bluff a quick settlement. His theory of liability was shaky at best. The Tinzo chain saws in question actually had an impressive safety record. And, most important, product liability litigation was complicated, expensive, way over his head, and usually involved jury trials, which Mack had always tried to avoid. There was comfort in filing divorces and personal bankruptcies and doing an occasional will or deed. Little in the way of fees, but he and most of the other lawyers in Clanton could eke out a living while avoiding almost all risk.
«We have no record of any lawsuits being filed down there,» Marty was saying.
«Not yet,» Mack said with as much bluster as he could manage.
«How many of these cases do you have, Mack?»
«Four,» he said, though he wasn$prime;t certain of the exact number.
«Yes, that$prime;s what our records show. We have the four letters you sent to the company sometime back. However, there doesn$prime;t seem to have been much activity since the original correspondence.»
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