The Litigators

David Zinc is a Harvard law grad, 31 years old, now working in a huge, multinational firm in downtown Chicago, making a lot of money, and hating every moment of it. His grandfather was a successful lawyer in Kansas City, and his father sat on the Supreme Court in Minnesota. David was bred for being a lawyer, so he can’t just walk away. But, David was exhausted and he wanted out, and he had no idea how to do that. One day, as he arrived at the office in the morning, he “snapped.” He set foot on the 93rd floor of his building, and then turned around and dove into the elevator before the doors could close. He ran to a nearby bar where he turned off his cell phone and proceeded to get polluted. He had no intention of ever returning to Rogan Rothberg again, but what was he to do? He had saved a little money, but he still had a wife who was trying to get pregnant, and he had a mortgage to pay. So desperate on the day of his “snap,” after he had been drinking all day long, he got in a cab to go home when in his fogged-over brain, he saw the address for a law firm on the side of a city bus, and he directed the cab driver to take him there. He stumbled into a two-man firm of ambulance chasers, literally. Finley & Figg. They were lousy attorneys and made very little money, certainly not enough to support David, which is what he got around to proposing. Then, when David returned there the next day, slimeball Wally Figg chased down another of his get-rich-quick schemes. He thought a certain hypercholesterol drug was causing side effects, including sudden death in some patients. Only thing, Wally had not done any research that would have shown him this was a good drug, even if the pharmaceutical company, the third largest in Big Pharma, had made other drugs that were not and had settled those cases for big money. The small firm could not afford to put on the case, so they teamed up with a big tort law firm that promised to front their expenses in exchange for a huge cut of their fees. But, when the drug proved to do what it advertised, lower cholesterol without killing people in the process, the tort firm waltzed away. The drug company did not want to just let it go. With thousands of lawsuits lining up against them across the nation, they wanted a decisive victory against the first case being brought against them, Wally Figg’s case. For reasons you’ll have to read about, first Oscar Finley and then Wally Figg were unable to appear in court, leaving this mess to a very unprepared David Zinc who had not seen the inside of a court room since Moot Court in law school And who does the big pharma company hire to defend itself, none other than his old firm, Rogan Rothberg, which has endless resources, the most capable and ruthless attorneys, and a good case. They want to scare off anyone else who might want to take them on.