Gray Mountain by John Grisham

Author:John Grisham
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9780385539166
Published: 2014-10-21T05:00:00+00:00

Mattie, too, was shoeless late Thursday afternoon when Samantha returned to the office. Everyone else was gone and the front door was locked. They went to the conference room so they could watch the traffic on Main Street as they talked. Throughout her thirty-year career as a lawyer, and especially the last twenty-six years at the clinic, Mattie had repeatedly butted heads with the boys (always men—never women) at Casper Slate. Their brand of aggressive advocacy often went even further, into the realm of unethical conduct, perhaps even criminal behavior. About a decade earlier, she had taken the extreme measure of filing an ethics complaint against the firm with the Virginia bar association. Two Castrate lawyers were reprimanded, nothing serious, and when it was all over it had not been worth the trouble. In retaliation, the firm targeted her whenever possible and backstabbed even more fiercely when defending one of her black lung cases. Her clients suffered, and she regretted challenging the firm head-on. She was quite aware of Dr. Foy and Dr. Aberdeen, two renowned and eminently qualified researchers who’d been purchased by the coal companies years ago. The hospitals where they worked received millions in research grants from the coal industry.

As jaded as Mattie was toward the law firm, she was still surprised at Samantha’s discovery. She read the copy of Dr. Foy’s report to the pathologist in Beckley. Oddly enough, neither Foy nor Aberdeen was mentioned in the Ryzer hearing. Foy’s medical report was not submitted; rather, the lawyers at Casper Slate used another slew of doctors, none of whom mentioned the findings of Dr. Foy. Had they been told of these findings? “Highly unlikely,” was Mattie’s prediction. “These lawyers are known for concealing evidence that’s not helpful to the coal company. It’s safe to assume that both doctors saw the lung tissue and arrived at the same conclusion: that Buddy had complicated black lung disease. So the lawyers buried it and found more experts.”

“How can you just bury evidence?” Samantha asked, a question she’d been repeating to herself for many hours.

“It’s easy for these guys. Keep in mind this happens before an administrative law judge, not a real federal judge. It’s a hearing, not a trial. In a real trial there are strict rules regarding discovery and full disclosure; not so in a black lung hearing. The rules are far more relaxed, and these guys have spent decades tweaking and manipulating the rules. In about half the cases, the miner, like Buddy, has no lawyer, so it’s really not a fair fight.”

“I get that, but tell me how the lawyers for Lonerock Coal could know for a fact that Buddy had the disease as early as 1997, then cover it up by finding the other doctors who testified, under oath, that he was not suffering from black lung.”

“Because they’re crooks.”

“And we can’t do anything about it? Sounds like fraud and conspiracy to me. Why can’t they be sued? If they did it to Buddy Ryzer, you can bet they’ve done it to a thousand others.

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