Now he was in a law office taking an oath to tell the truth about Joan. He decided to be respectful, so he shook Goodman’s hand and sat down in a chair that looked out over the Chicago River. The court reporter sat to his left, while Goodman took a seat directly across from him. Mike Demetrio, Brett’s lawyer, sat at the far end of the table and appeared to be immersed in a magazine. But he was actually listening carefully to every word, ready to object at any moment.
“Please state your full name for the record,” Goodman said.
“Brett Alan Van Bortel.”
“Let the record reflect this is the discovery deposition of Brett Alan Van Bortel being taken pursuant to the notice for today’s date,” she said. “Mr. Van Bortel, my name is Ann Goodman. I’m one of the attorneys representing USAir in this matter.”
Goodman was a petite, humorless woman with blond hair who was the Chicago-based lawyer for USAir. Dombroff, the airline’s lead attorney, worked in Washington, so he had retained Goodman’s firm to handle much of the work on the Cook County lawsuits. Reading from Dombroff’s lengthy script of questions, Goodman robotically asked about Brett’s homes and mortgages. Then she abruptly switched gears and asked about drugs. Each question elicited just a fragment of information, so it took ten or twenty questions to get to anything of substance.
“Are you currently taking any medication?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Have you taken any medication today?”
“No, I have not.”
“Have you taken any medication in the last twenty-four hours?”
“No, I have not.”
“What medication are you currently taking?”
“On an irregular basis when I travel, Xanax. It’s an anti-anxiety drug for air travel, I guess.”
“And you only take it for air travel?”
“Before and during flights. That’s about it.”
Goodman asked lots of questions about Brett’s employment, from the days when he operated a ski lift in Vail through his writing job for the company that published the Official Airline Guide. Then she began asking about Joan.
“Did you marry a woman by the name of Joan Lahart, correct?”
“Joan Elizabeth Lahart.”
“How did you happen to meet?”
“A friend of a friend, very casual, distant type of acquaintance. I had only met Joan briefly and it wasn’t until later on that we started dating.”
“What was it that attracted you to Joan?”
“I don’t know that I could put that in a nutshell,” Brett said. “It would be a combination of many things, but I thought she was a very beautiful woman and a very strong-willed and motivated woman.”
Goodman seemed to jump randomly from topic to topic. She asked about Brett’s and Joan’s hobbies and interests, whether they went to college or professional football games, then about the names and ages of each of Joan’s brothers, then how much they had paid for the house on Riedy Road, and then about the night of the crash.
“Was Joan required to make a business trip for Akzo Nobel on September 8, 1994?”
“I guess I would quibble with required,” Brett said. “I don’t know if they made her, but she went on her trip for Akzo, yes.”
Goodman asked Brett to describe the last time he had seen Joan and how he found out about the crash. Demetrio had heard the same painful questions at several depositions with his clients, and he was mystified as to why the USAir lawyers persisted in asking them.
“Did you see her on September 8 before she took off for the airport?”
“Yes.”
“When did you see her on September 8th?”
“It was our ritual for me to drop her off at the train station in Lisle for her 6:20 train, which I did that morning.”
“What did you say to her, and she say to you.”
“I think I just said, ‘Love you and good-bye.’”
“Did you talk to her during the course of the day?”
He nodded.
“Did she say anything to you at the train station?”
“She just, I think, repeated that back to me. We knew we’d speak on the phone later that day.”
Goodman asked about every tragic detail—what they said when they spoke that afternoon, how he heard about the crash, when he called USAir, when he got confirmation that she had been on the plane, and when he received Joan’s remains. Then she asked about Brett’s visits to see a psychologist.
“Did Dr. Pimental help you?”
“In some ways, but ultimately, no.”
“How was she able to help you?”
“I would say helping me understand myself better and my reaction to it, but I ultimately came to the conclusion that no one but God was ever going to change what happened, and talking about it would not help me.”
Back to mortgage questions. Goodman wanted to know how much Brett had paid for his new condo on Lake Shore Drive, how big a mortgage he had, what his interest rate was. And then she abruptly shifted gears again.
“How would you describe your marriage to her?”
“Excellent. We got along like best friends. I was very fortunate. I don’t know why or how it happened, but I was one of the people that had one of the very good ones. I was very lucky.”
“Did you plan to have any children.”
“Yes.”
“Had you made any attempts to start a family?”
“No.”
“Were you waiting for a certain period of time?”
“Yes.”
“How long had you planned on waiting?”
“About another year.”
“How would you describe your physical relationship with Joan?”
“Very good. I don’t know, I guess I’m uncomfortable describing it. It was very good.”
“You had normal sexual relations with her?”
“Yes.”
“On a regular basis?”
“Yes.”
“What was the frequency?”
Brett looked at Demetrio to see if he would object. When Demetrio did not, Brett looked back at Goodman, pitying her for having to ask such a question. She probably goes home and hates herself, Brett thought.
Brett answered the question.
Goodman asked who did the cleaning, took out the garbage, did the laundry, shoveled snow off the driveway, did the grocery shopping, the cooking, and the dishes. Who paid the bills? Did he have his bank statements from 1994? How much was the electric bill? The gas bill? How was Joan’s health? Did she smoke? How much did she drink? How much did she weigh? Was she ever convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor?
Brett answered all her questions.
“Are you currently engaged?”
“No.”
“Have you dated anyone recently?”
Demetrio had known that one was coming. “I’m going to object to that question for the same reasoning that I objected to it at all the other depositions, and based upon that particular question, I’d instruct him not to answer,” he said.
“I will state what my answer to your objection is,” Goodman replied, “that it goes to the discovery process.”
“Great,” Demetrio said, still unconvinced. “I understand, just like I did all the other times.”
Goodman abandoned the question and went to the next one. “Do you have any plans to remarry?”
“No,” Brett said.
20. EASTWIND
As Eastwind Airlines Flight 517 neared Richmond, Virginia, the night of June 9, 1996, Captain Brian Bishop felt a bump from the back of the plane. “Did you feel that?” he asked the first officer.
Before Bishop got an answer, the plane’s nose veered right and the right wing dipped toward the ground. Back in the passenger cabin, a flight attendant was tossed into a row of seats. Bishop stomped on the left rudder pedal, but it felt stiff. He turned the wheel to the left and added power to the right engine. That stopped the plane from rolling, but he could not get the wings level. He pressed on the left rudder pedal with all his weight, but could not get it down. The plane was stable, but was flying with the right wing tipped precariously toward the ground. The 737 was heading straight for the lights of downtown Richmond.