The Appeal Read Online Free

to say aloud except that he very much treasured his job, let’s start with the fact that our company built a pesticide plant in Podunk, Mississippi, because the land and labor were dirt cheap, then we spent the next thirty years dumping chemicals and waste into the ground and into the rivers, quite illegally of course, and we contaminated the drinking water until it tasted like spoiled milk, which, as bad as it was, wasn’t the worst part, because then people started dying of cancer and leukemia.
    That, Mr. Boss and Mr. CEO and Mr. Corporate Raider, is exactly what went wrong.
    “The lawyers feel good about the appeal,” Ratzlaff said instead, without much conviction.
    “Oh, that’s just super. Right now I really trust these lawyers. Where did you find these clowns?”
    “They’re the best, okay?”
    “Sure. And let’s just explain to the press that we’re ecstatic about our appeal and perhaps our stock won’t crash tomorrow. Is that what you’re saying?”
    “We can spin it,” Ratzlaff said. The other two lawyers were glancing at the glass walls. Who wanted to be the first to jump?
    One of Mr. Trudeau’s cell phones rang and he snatched it off the table. “Hi, honey,” he said as he stood and walked away. It was (the third) Mrs. Trudeau, the latest trophy, a deadly young woman whom Ratzlaff and everyone else at the company avoided at all costs. Her husband was whispering, then said goodbye.
    He walked to a window near the lawyers and gazed at the sparkling towers around him. “Bobby,” he said without looking, “do you have any idea where the jury got the figure of thirty-eight million for punitive damages?”
    “Not right offhand.”
    “Of course you don’t. For the first nine months of this year, Krane has averaged thirty-eight million a month in profits. A bunch of ignorant rednecks who collectively couldn’t earn a hundred grand a year, and they sit there like gods taking from the rich and giving to the poor.”
    “We still have the money, Carl,” Ratzlaff said. “It’ll be years before a dime changes hands, if, in fact, that ever happens.”
    “Great! Spin that to the wolves tomorrow while our stock goes down the drain.”
    Ratzlaff shut up and slumped in his chair. The other two lawyers were not about to utter a sound.
    Mr. Trudeau was pacing dramatically. “Forty-one million dollars. And there are how many other cases out there, Bobby? Did someone say two hundred, three hundred? Well, if there were three hundred this morning, there will be three thousand tomorrow morning. Every redneck in south Mississippi with a fever blister will now claim to have sipped the magic brew from Bowmore. Every two-bit ambulance chaser with a law degree is driving there now to sign up clients. This wasn’t supposed to happen, Bobby. You assured me.”
    Ratzlaff had a memo under lock and key. It was eight years old and had been prepared under his supervision. It ran for a hundred pages and described in gruesome detail the company’s illegal dumping of toxic waste at the Bowmore plant. It summarized the company’s elaborate efforts to hide the dumping, to dupe the Environmental Protection Agency, and to buy off the politicians at the local, state, and federal level. It recommended a clandestine but effective cleanup of the waste site, at a cost of some $50 million. It begged anyone who read it to stop the dumping.
    And, most important at this critical moment, it predicted a bad verdict someday in a courtroom.
    Only luck and a flagrant disregard for the rules of civil procedure had allowed Ratzlaff to keep the memo a secret.
    Mr. Trudeau had been given a copy of it eight years earlier, though he now denied he’d ever seen it. Ratzlaff was tempted to dust it off now and read a few selected passages, but, again, he treasured his job.
    Mr. Trudeau walked to the table, placed both palms flat on the Italian leather, glared at Bobby Ratzlaff, and said, “I swear to you, it will never happen. Not one dime of our