Ben passed the top document to Crichton. “I guess Al thought that since Loving had gone to so much trouble, he deserved to be rewarded. So Al dug up his personal copies of these reports, copies you didn’t know he had.”
Ben pointed to the top page. “I bet you’ve seen this report before, haven’t you? Your initials are on it. After the first field reports came in suggesting there were problems with the XKL-1 design, Apollo ordered a series of tests. The testing was quite extensive. No doubt about it: the XKL-1 was unsafe. And you, and Bernie King, and everyone on the design team knew it.”
“The testing was inconclusive. Improper control group, wild extrapolations from insufficient data—”
“Don’t bother, Crichton. I’ve already read the report.” He passed across the next document in his stack. “Here we have the minutes of a series of meetings held by the Apollo Board of Directors. It seems they learned about the safety problems, too. And they had to decide what to do about it.”
Ben pointed to the bottom of one of the pages. “Evidently some of those meetings were a bit on the dull side—notice all the doodling in the margins. I particularly enjoyed that cartoon with the small child being mangled by the XKL-1 suspension system. You Apollo guys sure have some sense of humor.”
“I see nothing incriminating about this,” Crichton said unevenly. “On the contrary, this seems to me to be the work of a conscientious corporation trying to discover the truth.”
“Trying to discover the truth? Yes. The question is: what did they do with the truth?” Ben tossed the final document in his stack to Crichton. “This document outlines the cost-benefit analysis performed at the behest of the Apollo directors. They determined that the cost of redesigning the system, implementing the new design, altering the manufacturing equipment, recalling the XKL-1 and marketing the new product would be almost two hundred million dollars. Not enough to sink Apollo by a long shot, but a sizable chunk of change nonetheless.
“As you can see, if you’re reading along, Apollo then analyzed the costs attendant to retaining the current design. The only real cost item was the lawsuits that would predictably arise as people were injured by the defective system. They estimated that approximately twenty lawsuits a year would be filed, and that the average plaintiff could be bought off—excuse me, that a settlement could be reached for about a quarter of a million bucks. A quiet settlement, before any publicity got stirred up. In short, even if this went on for forty years, it would still be cheaper to retain the old design.”
Ben looked at Crichton sharply. “Guess what they decided to do?”
Crichton cleared his throat. “The business of a corporation is to make money. If business suffers, everyone suffers.”
“Spare me the trickle-down rationalization. This corporation decided that it would be cheaper to allow people to be mutilated and killed than to spend money implementing a new design. So they just sat back and counted their millions while people like Jason Nelson died.”
“There’s no need for sanctimonious—”
Ben flung the report into Crichton’s face. “These ten pages are the documents you removed from the production to the Nelsons and their attorney. You misrepresented the contents of the documents to me, and based upon that misrepresentation, I got summary judgment against them. If the Nelsons had received these documents, as they should have, they would have blown me out of the water.”
“Litigation is a cutthroat business. We play hardball at Apollo. We have a duty to our shareholders—”
“This is the most cynical, cold-hearted exercise in unrestrained greed I’ve ever heard of! Corporations should use their vast resources to help people. Instead, you let this anything-for-the-bottom-line mentality fester until it creates monsters like Rob Fielder and the XKL-1.”
Crichton pushed himself out of his chair. “You’re so goddamn naive. This is corporate America, Kincaid. Everyone does it! Why do you think soft drink companies still use those bottle caps that poke people’s eyes out? Why do so few cars have airbags? Corporations don’t exist to contribute to the common good. They exist to turn a profit.”
“Well,” Ben said, “since you feel so righteous about this, you won’t mind if I take my information public.”
Crichton folded his hands in his lap and settled down. “All right. What do you want?”
“First, I want you to go before the Board and tell them the XKL-1 has to be scrapped, and all existing models must be recalled.”
“That would cost millions—”
“And you’ll do it! Or I’ll go public with these documents, and you’ll have consumer groups, government agencies, and probably a class action suit breathing down your neck.”
Crichton’s teeth rattled together. “Very well. What else?”
“Five million dollars to the Nelsons. No strings.”
“That lawsuit is over.”
“That lawsuit is over because you lied to me. If you hadn’t misrepresented the nature of the missing documents, we’d still be in court, and they’d be in line for one of Apollo’s quarter of a million dollar Christmas presents. Five million won’t make up for the loss of their son. But it’s better than nothing.”
“All right. What else can we do for you, Kincaid?”
“You can pay Gloria Hamel’s medical bills. Including her plastic surgery. And give her some money to carry her through this period of mourning and recovery. Two hundred thousand ought to do it.”
Crichton’s eyes widened. “Surely you’re not suggesting Apollo is responsible for what happened to her?”
“No, not directly. But she needs help and you can give it to her. Consider it compensation for all the misery you’ve inflicted since the XKL-1 was implemented.”
“Fine.” Crichton checked his calendar. “The Board meets tomorrow morning. I’ll present your package to them then.”
“I’ll be waiting to hear the result.”
“And if they refuse?”
“Then I go public with the documents.”
“You are a lawyer representing the Apollo Consortium. You owe us a duty of zealous loyalty. In fact, those documents are covered by the attorney-client privilege. It would be a gross ethical violation to disclose them to the general public.”
“I don’t give a damn. If the Board doesn’t cooperate, I’ll send copies to every newspaper in the Southwest.”
“I’ll see that you’re disbarred.”
“And I’ll see that you’re arrested. Negligent homicide. Aiding and abetting, at the least.”
Crichton laughed, but the laugh sounded very hollow. “That will never stick.”
“Do you really want to take the chance?”
There was a long silence as the two men stared at one another across a much too small expanse of carpet.
“Have you no sense of propriety at all?” Crichton asked. “No sense of loyalty?”
“To you? No.”
“You were hired to assist the Apollo Consortium.”
“I wasn’t hired to be a patsy.”
A hideous grin spread across Crichton’s face. “You still haven’t figured out why you were hired, have you?”
Ben raised his chin. “What do you mean? I was hired to work on your litigation team.”
Crichton shook his head. “You stupid fool. Blinded by your own egotism. Surely you didn’t believe all those nauseating compliments I paid you?”
“I…don’t know what you mean…”
“You were hired because we learned you had represented the Nelsons on a prior personal injury matter. Period. We were searching for something we could use against them in their suit against Apollo—something to force an early settlement and ensure their silence thereafter. We learned from the court records that your lawsuit for the Nelsons involved mental injuries as well as physical. If we could find a doctor’s report, or perhaps a deposition transcript, indicating that one or both of them had mental problems…well, obviously, that would undermine their credibility. It would reinforce our argument that the Nelsons were paranoid, unbalanced people desperately searching for a scapegoat.”