I nodded in agreement. Companies don’t willingly offer information on benefits that will add to their insurance premiums. Especially looking at a case like Louisa’s, where she was getting major medical payments besides her disability check.
“But what about their union?” I asked. “Wouldn’t the shop steward have notified them?”
He shook his head. “It’s a single-shop union and it’s pretty much a mouthpiece for the company. Especially now -there’s so much unemployment in the neighborhood they don’t want to rock the boat.”
“Unlike the Steelworkers,” I interjected dryly.
He grinned for the first time, looking even younger than before. “Well, you can’t blame them. The Xerxes union, I mean. But anyway, the two guys had read someplace that Xerxine could cause these health problems, and since they were both up against it financially, they thought maybe they could at least collect workers’ comp for not being able to work. You know, job-related condition and all that.”
“I see. So you went to Humboldt and tried to work something out? Or you went directly to litigation?”
“I had to work fast-it wasn’t clear how long either of them would live. I went to the company first, but when they didn’t want to play ball I didn’t fool around-I filed a suit. Of course if we’d won after they died, their families would have been entitled to an indemnity payment. And that would make quite a difference to them financially. But you like your clients to be alive to see their victories.”
I nodded. It would have made a big difference, especially to Mrs. Pankowski with all her children. Illinois insurers pay a quarter of a million to families of workers who die on the job, so it was worth the effort.
“So what happened?”
“Well, I saw right away the company was going to stonewall, so we sued. Then we got an early docket. Even being stuck down on the South Side, I’ve got a few connections.” He smiled to himself, but declined to share the joke.
“Trouble was, both guys smoked, Pankowski was a heavy drinker, and they’d both lived all their lives in South Chicago. I guess if you grew up there, I don’t have to tell you what the air was like. So Humboldt socked us. They said on the one hand that there wasn’t any way to prove Xerxine had made these guys sick instead of their cigarettes or the general shit in the air. And they also pointed out that both of them had been working there before anyone knew how toxic the stuff was. So even if Xerxine did make them sick, it didn’t count-you know, they operated the plant based on current medical knowledge. So we lost handily. I talked to a really good appellate lawyer and he felt there just wasn’t anything to go on with. End of story.”
I thought about it for a minute. “Yeah, but if that’s all that happened, why is Xerxes jumping like a nervous rabbit when it hears those guys’ names?”
He shrugged. “Probably same reason I didn’t want to talk to you to begin with. They don’t believe you’re on your own. They don’t think you’re looking for a long-lost father. They think you’re trying to stir the pot up again. You’ve got to admit your story looks pretty farfetched.”
Reluctantly, I looked at it from his point of view. Given all this history I hadn’t known about, I could understand, sort of I still couldn’t figure out why Humboldt felt he had to intervene. If his company had won the case fair and square, what difference did it make if his subordinates talked to me about Pankowski and Ferraro?
“And also,” I added aloud, “why are you so upset? Do you think they were wrong? I mean, do you think the trial was rigged somehow?”
He shook his head unhappily. “No. Based on the evidence, I don’t think we could have won. I think we should have. I mean, I think these guys deserved something for putting twenty years of their lives into the company, especially since it’s probable that working there killed them. I mean, look at your friend’s mother. She’s dying too. Kidney failure did you say? But the law spells it out, or the precedents do-you can’t fault the company for operating under the best knowledge they had available at the time.”
“So that’s it? You just don’t like to talk about it because you feel bad that you couldn’t win for them?”
He communed again with his glasses and his tie. “Oh, that would get me down. No one likes losing, and God, you couldn’t help wanting these guys to win. But then, you know, the company could see that plant go belly-up if we set a successful precedent. Everyone who’d ever been sick or died there coming back for these big settlements.”
He stopped. I made myself sit very quietly.
At last he said, “No. It’s just that I got a threatening phone call. After the case. When we were considering the appeal.”
“That would be grounds for overturning the verdict,” I burst out. “Didn’t you go to the state’s attorney?”
He shook his head. “I just got the one phone call. And whoever called didn’t mention the case by name-just a generic reference to the dangers of using the appellate system. I’m not very tough physically, but I’m not a coward either. The call made me angry, angrier than I’ve ever been, and I pushed and prodded every way after that to build an appeal. There just wasn’t any way to.”
“They didn’t call you later to congratulate you for following their advice?”
“I never heard from the guy again. But when you showed up out of nowhere…”
I laughed. “Glad to know I could be mistaken for muscle. I may need it before the day is over.”
He blushed. “No, no. You don’t look-I don’t mean-I mean, you’re a very attractive lady. But you never know these days… I wish I could tell you something about your friend’s father, but we never talked about anything like that. My clients and I.”
“No, I can see you wouldn’t have.” I thanked him for his frankness and got up.
“If you come across anything else you think I could help you with, let me know,” he said, shaking my hand. “Especially if it might give me some grounds for a writ of certiorari.”
I assured him I would and left. I was wiser than I’d been when I came in, but no less confused.
16
It was well past noon by the time Manheim and I finished talking. I headed for the Loop and picked up a Diet Coke and a sandwich-corned beef, which I reserve for occasions when I need special nourishment-and took them to my office.
I could see Manheim’s point. Sort of If Humboldt lost a suit like that, it could spell disaster, the kind of problem that drove Johns-Manville to seek bankruptcy protection. But Manville’s situation had been different: they had known asbestos was toxic and covered up their knowledge. So when the ugly truth came out workers sued for punitive damages.
All Humboldt would have faced was a series of comp claims. Even so, that might be sticky. Say they’d had a thousand workers at the plant over a ten-year period and they all died: at a quarter of a million a pop, even if Ajax was paying for it, that was a lot of balloons.
I licked mustard from my fingers. Maybe I was looking at it wrong-maybe it was Ajax not wanting to make the payout-Gordon Firth telling his good buddy Gustav Humboldt to cool out any attempts to reopen the case. But Firth couldn’t have known I was involved-the word wouldn’t have run around Chicago that fast. Or maybe it would. You’ve never seen gossip and rumor mills until you’ve spent a week in a large corporation.
And then, why had someone threatened Manheim about the appeal? If Humboldt was dead to rights on the legal issues, there wasn’t any percentage in going after Manheim -it would just cause a judge to vacate the decree. So it couldn’t have been the company trying to brush him back.
Or maybe it was some very junior person. Someone who thought he could make a name for himself in the company by putting a little muscle on the plaintiffs. That wasn’t a totally improbable scenario. You get a corporate atmosphere where ethics are a little loose and subordinates think that the way to management’s heart is across their opponents’ bodies.