Robert Sherwood liked her immediately.
“Something to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“How was your trip out here?”
“Fine.”
Visitors normally couldn’t resist gawking at the cavernous entranceway to Sherwood’s manor or staring through the house to the bank of windows overlooking the water. The view from the front entrance was breathtaking. One could see past the plush marbles and rich woods and antique furniture of the interior, through the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the back wall, straight to the layered terrace and exquisite landscaping leading down to Long Island Sound. On a clear day, you could stand at Sherwood’s front door and see sailboats, pleasure yachts, and other vessels dotting the sound for more than a mile in each direction.
Sherwood’s neighbors were some of the wealthiest men and women in America-not the flashy nouveau riche, television stars and athletes with limited earning capacity, but the old-time money with real fortunes-hedge fund operators and brokerage firm executives savvy enough to have survived the stock market meltdown of 2008. These were the men and women who made more each year than the combined payroll of the New York Knicks.
Yet Melissa Davids, to her credit, was apparently impressed by none of this.
“I don’t have long,” she said, hardly even glancing around. “I suggest we get down to business.”
“All right,” Sherwood said. “But first I want to show you something.”
He led her through the massive family room that stretched across the back of the house, past a wet bar, and through a door that opened into another large room spanning the house’s east side. It had few windows and no view of the harbor. Its design was more rustic, with a stone fireplace and a number of trophy kills hanging on the walls-African lions, Alaskan bears, Canadian elk.
Sherwood took his guns seriously. His collection contained more than forty firearms, including four rifles and two pistols manufactured by MD Firearms.
Melissa Davids’s lips curled into a little smile. “Your friends told me you were a collector.”
They spent nearly a half hour in the trophy room, with Davids critiquing her competitors’ firearms and even pointing out a few flaws in her own. A dry wit came to the surface, and she allowed Sherwood to talk her into a drink.
“Scotch? Brandy?” Sherwood asked.
“I’m from the South,” Davids replied. “We drink whiskey and beer.”
Over Bud Lights, they swapped hunting stories. For lunch, Sherwood served sandwiches and chips on paper plates.
Halfway through the meal, Davids checked her watch. “Okay,” she said, “you pass the bona fide gun nut test. Now, let’s get down to business. Senator Michaels said you might be able to help with the Crawford case.”
“I run the best jury consulting firm in the world,” Sherwood said. He put his sandwich down and launched into an explanation of the micromarketing techniques that Justice Inc. employed to predict jury verdicts.
Davids looked skeptical. “I spend a few million bucks on lawyers every year. If you’re so good, why haven’t I heard of you?”
Sherwood lowered his voice. This was the critical part. “We’ve spent millions perfecting the system. But to be frank, companies like yours can’t afford our services.”
Davids didn’t flinch, but he could tell he had her attention.
“We impanel mock juries who very closely mirror the actual juries. Other consulting firms know how to use shadow juries. But our jurors so closely track the real jurors that they’re more like clones. We hold mock trials with these jurors, working around the clock to predict the actual verdict days or even weeks before the real trial concludes. We sell our research to hedge fund operators and investment firms.”
Davids had stopped eating and Sherwood could see the look in her eyes, the dawning realization that this might be an asset she hadn’t considered before. A different league. What could be more valuable than the ability to predict exactly which jurors might be most sympathetic to her case?
But she was a tough negotiator who knew better than to act impressed. “And because you’re such a big fan of guns, you’re going to make an exception in this case,” Davids said, with a twinge of sarcasm. “For the meager sum of a half million or so, you’re going to tell us exactly which jurors to strike and which ones to keep.”
Sherwood smiled. “I already told you-you can’t afford us.”
“Then what’s your angle? Why this elaborate show?”
Sherwood got up and grabbed another beer from the refrigerator. “I want you to win,” he said. “I like your side of the debate. Plus, if I intend to make a lot of money on the case, I can’t afford to be surprised by the verdict.”
“Then let me put your mind at ease,” Davids said. She took another bite of her sandwich. Sherwood waited while she chewed. “We haven’t paid any plaintiffs yet. We don’t intend to start with Blake Crawford. We’ll win, Mr. Sherwood. You can put your money down right now.”
Robert Sherwood shook his head. “We ran three mock juries on that Indiana case that was headed to trial until Congress bailed you out with the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. You would have lost nearly ten million. You haven’t paid anything yet, but only because you’ve never actually gone to trial in a case like this one.”
Sherwood watched the lines on Davids’s face tighten, the eyes narrow. She didn’t like hearing this, but he kept his voice steady, matter-of-fact. “Your high-priced lawyers and in-house counsel have lost almost every critical hearing this past year in the cases currently pending against you. So far, courts in New York, Indiana, and the state of Washington have either held the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act unconstitutional or found other ways around it. It’s just a matter of time before you have to start facing real juries on these cases where you’re allegedly indirectly supplying the black market, and our research is not encouraging.”
Davids finished her beer and wiped her mouth. “I’ve got enough people telling me how bad things are going,” she said, her words terse. “I’m fully aware that inner-city juries are just dying to tag a gun manufacturer like us with a huge verdict. It’s the American way, Mr. Sherwood. Everybody’s a victim. Sue the big, bad corporation. I didn’t really need to come all the way up here for the civics lesson.”
“I’ve got a solution,” Sherwood said. She gave him a don’t-we-all? look. “Wait,” he said, “hear me out.”
“My plane leaves in two and a half hours. It will take thirty minutes to get to the airport.”
“All right, let me get right to it.” Sherwood said. “Virginia Beach is a good town for a test case-it’s pretty conservative and mostly Republican. But there’s not much of a gun culture there. You need a different type of lawyer to handle this case. Somebody young. Somebody who doesn’t fit the stereotype. Somebody who can relate to a Virginia Beach jury.”
“And I suppose you have just the person?”
“He’s the best young trial lawyer I’ve ever seen. I had to release him from our program because he was too good-skewing the results. He would win cases that most of us thought were unwinnable.”
Sherwood could tell from the look on her face that Davids was not buying it. “I’ve already got plenty of lawyers,” she said. “And I need true believers, not somebody who, as you say, ‘goes against stereotype.’”
“Humor me,” Sherwood said. “Just spend fifteen minutes watching this kid on tape.”
Davids put up some initial resistance but ultimately agreed. They went to a flat-screen television hanging on the wall, where Sherwood had the highlight film ready to go-portions of an opening statement, Jason on cross-examination, a slice of Jason’s best closing argument. Sherwood provided running commentary, explaining that Davids could use her in-house lawyer to drive the overall strategy and Jason to try the case.
“This kid is magic with a jury,” Sherwood reiterated. “You can teach him how to use guns, why they’re important. Someone like Jason who is less immersed in the gun culture will be better at explaining those concepts to the jury in a way they can understand.”