Just how much is greed, a million, ten million, one hundred million, or even more ? for a lousy job badly done?
When a person works hard for a paltry remuneration it is annoying - when the same person hardly works in return for astronomical sums, it is not only annoying, but more than that, it is sickening.
It?s understandable that Clay Carter is unhappy, but surprisingly honest and principled, with his petty salary of 40, 000/- a year. But what is shocking is that he is still unhappy, but not honest and principled anymore with an income of 100 million in a period of just 6 months and still his ?dil maange more.?
Does that convey a moral message to the reader? The message is - most of us prefer to be ?miserably rich than happily poor?. This ?get rich quick at all costs? syndrome is more harmful, in the long run, than any other psychological illness, because it leaves such people devoid of the very mental faculties necessary to classify them as human beings.
MAIN CHARACTERS:
Clay Carter:
An honest and principled lawyer stuck in the grass-roots of the legal profession. He is unhappy with his posting, unhappy with the remuneration, unhappy with the future career growth prospects his present position offers. He is also unhappy with the way his girlfriend?s parents are interfering in his life.
Rebecca loves Carter, but she is the only child of her parents and a pawn in their hands. She puts extra pressure on Carter to take up a new, better and lucrative job which her father has somehow managed to arrange for Carter. But, Carter is not interested and consequently, his girlfriend ditches him. He is the hero of the story?or is he?
Max Pace:
Max Pace is a trouble shooter of sorts. A suave, smooth talking smart Alec who is well versed in exploiting the legal loopholes. In the corporate-legal world such a trouble shooter is called as ?fireman?. Firemen are recruited by giant corporations to diffuse a potentially explosive situation.
Basically, world renowned mega-corporations try to side step or totally avoid inevitable lawsuits from potential customers or consumers who have directly or indirectly suffered on account of using their products. Lawsuits can irreparably damage the image and reputation of a corporation, besides they are forced to dole out large sums of money as compensation, the stock prices also take a nose dive.
Not surprisingly, these corporations tend to identify the victims and arrange for an out of court settlement through the services of the so called ?fireman? and a lawyer supposedly representing the victims. All this is done anonymously and the corporations never come into the picture unless they have too.
The modus operandi is to identify the unsuspecting victims even before any word gets out of a malicious product or an experiment gone wrong that was responsible for loss of life or resulting in damage to their health. The victims are happy to receive a windfall, the lawyer representing them pockets a filthy sum, the fireman gets his neat cut ? case closed.
Other Characters:
None of the other characters have a major role to play in this story. Most of them simply fade away. Even Rebecca doesn?t seem to hold attention for too long, so I may be excused for forgetting their names or roles by the time I reached the last page. This book has only three major things going for it ? Clay Carter, Max Pace, and the plot. And that brings us to the plot?
THE PLOT:
A random mindless street killing case falls in the lap of Clay Carter, a lowly paid lawyer working in the ?Office of the Public Defender. It?s an open and shut case. There?s not much Carter can do to save the defendant, and Carter hates such cases anyway. He tries to pass on the case to somebody else in his department but fails. Stuck with it he resigns himself to the usual grinds of a homicide.
During the course of routine investigation, he meets one Max Pace, or more correctly it?s Max Pace who invites Carter for a business lunch. The revelations during the meeting begin to have a metamorphic affect on Carter?s humdrum existence.
Carter jumps to grab the lollypop offered by Pace which changes his lifestyle in an unimaginable manner. Carter is on his way to become one of the most successful lawyers of his time. The media hails him as the next ?King of Torts?.
In the meanwhile, Carter has already started his own practice in Connecticut Avenue, an up market area in Washington D.C. His specialty, now is dealing in Class action lawsuits. One particular lawsuit makes him a millionaire hundred times over. Carter feels for the first time that he has truly arrived. This was the kind of lifestyle he always wanted. Or was it?
Carter feels the pangs of separation from the girl he truly loved; Rebecca had left him earlier branding him as an unsuccessful and un-ambitious person. Now, with all the riches, private jet and sprawling homes, he tries to woo her back to him.
In the meanwhile, things are hotting up in his profession; Carter?s ever increasing greed to grab a major pie of any settlement is beginning to boomerang on him with major repercussions. The victims realize that Carter was taking them for a ride all along and pocketing a major chunk of the compensation pie which they honestly believed belonged to them.
The rest of the story is all about whether Carter can manage to wriggle out of this tight spot.
My Views:
John Grisham, himself a lawyer at one time before he took to writing, manages to present a true picture of the happenings in Mass Class Action Lawsuits. He also narrates tellingly the behind the scenes action in preventing such lawsuits by mega corporations.
Grisham?s commanding grip over legal aspects shows throughout this book. But, what I feel lacking in this book is the storyline, and the lack of a credible ending. The ending seemed too soft and uncharacteristic. Maybe, Grisham was trying to please his countless fans.
On reading this book, I could vaguely identify it with what happened in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and the kind of games Union Carbide played for releasing compensation to victims. Only in this case, the corporation didn?t have a chance to suppress the litigation as within moments everyone came to know of the gas leak.
I felt as if I was taken high up on a precipice and just when the excitement was getting to me I was dropped off like they do in bungee jumping. Now, there are two ways of enjoying bungee jumping ? there is the thrill of going up, or there is the thrill of coming down. Not all people enjoy both, I didn?t either.
Not his best book by any stretch of imagination, but worth a read.
© MB Farookh. Jan, 2005.