Inadvertent Disclosure (3 page)

Five minutes before the hour,
Sasha and Jed settled in at the same counsel table they’d vacated an hour
earlier.

Technically, Sasha should have
moved to the defendant’s table across the room because she was no longer
representing the moving party. The movant—the party with the burden of
proof—customarily took the table closest to the jury box. It was one of those
formalities that no one told young lawyers about until they unknowingly
violated it.

But, Jed had eased himself into
the chair before she’d had a chance to explain the seating arrangement, and,
from what she’d seen, practice in Springport seemed to be on the casual side.
Not to mention, the breach of protocol might just get under opposing counsel’s
skin. Always a plus.

The courtroom door eased open,
flooding the room with light and the sound of chatter from the hallway. A thin,
tanned man with a neatly trimmed beard slipped through the doors. He wore a
navy suit and a red and blue striped tie. His wire-rimmed glasses reminded her
of a professor, which Sasha assumed was the intended effect.

He stopped beside the table.
His eyes flicked from Jed to Sasha and then back again.

“Mr. Craybill,” he said,
nodding at the old man.

Jed ignored the greeting.

Sasha stood and extended her
hand. “I’m Sasha McCandless, Mr. Craybill’s court-appointed attorney.”

He pumped her hand in a quick,
firm shake.

“Marty Braeburn,” he said. Then
he gave her a little frown. “I wasn’t aware Judge Paulson appointed counsel.”

Sasha smiled. “I was appointed
this morning.”

“Ah,” Braeburn nodded. “Where
did you say you practice?”

“I didn’t. My office is in
Pittsburgh. I was before the judge this morning on a discovery motion in
another case.”

“Pittsburgh,” Braeburn
repeated, clearly speaking to himself.

He glanced up at the clock
mounted above the bench and then said, “We have a few minutes before the
hearing starts. Let’s step out into the hall, shall we?”

He looked meaningfully at Jed,
who had been glaring at him without blinking.

Sasha whispered to Jed that
she’d hear what Braeburn had to say and be right back.

He shifted his eyes from the
county attorney to hers and nodded. “But no deals,” he whispered back.

Braeburn held open the gate
separating the well from the gallery. As she passed by him, he said in a
friendly voice, “Oh, by the way, I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of
your client, but you’re sitting at the wrong table.”

She allowed herself a small
smile. The fact that Braeburn had bothered to mention it was proof it nettled
him, and his tone told her he had decided she was inexperienced and
inconsequential. Just the way she liked it.

A scene from some Monty Python
movie flashed into her mind. She’d briefly dated an insurance adjuster named
Clay, or maybe it was Ken?  Whichever. He was a huge fan of British comedy and
acted like she’d told him she didn’t bathe regularly when she’d confessed to
having never seen any of the Monty Python skits. So, of course, he showed up at
her condo with a stack of videos. The only part that had stuck with her had
been the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog skit, where the knights were terrified of
a vicious monster that guarded a cave—she’d dozed off during the DVD and had
awoken to see the knights dismissing the creature as a threat because it turned
out to be a rabbit. The rabbit then attacked and decapitated one of them, then
killed two other knights. She still didn’t understand how the skits were even
remotely funny, and the Anglophile insurance adjuster was barely even a memory.
But, every once in a while, either in court or during a Krav Maga session, she
thought of herself as that bunny. A ferocious, killer bunny.

Out in the hallway, Braeburn led
her over to the far wall and leaned against a large rectangular window with an
arched top. The sill looked grimy, but the window itself was solid. Sasha
would’ve wagered it was original to the building.

Braeburn ducked his head and
spoke in a soft voice, just above a whisper. “I’m not sure how these hearings
are handled down in Allegheny County, but your role here is more or less a
formality, for appearance’s sake.”

Sasha raised a brow. “Oh,
really?”

He rushed to add, “You see,
Judge Paulson just likes to be squeaky clean. You may not realize this, but the
statute doesn’t mandate the appointment of counsel for the incapacitated
person. That’s left to the court’s discretion. And, really, it isn’t usually
necessary.”

“Allegedly incapacitated
person.”

“Pardon?”

“You just referred to my client
as the incapacitated person. That’s not been determined. You’ve alleged it.”

She smiled up at him and
wondered if he saw her sharp bunny fangs for what they were. Probably not yet.
But he would.

Braeburn started to frown, then
caught himself and smoothed his expression into something neutral, if not
exactly pleasant.

“See now, that’s what I’m
saying. It is not customary in this county for an incapacitation hearing to be
adversarial, Ms. McCandless. Our court-appointed attorneys generally understand
that the Department of Aging Services always has the best interests of the
allegedly
incapacitated person firmly in mind. They recognize that these people are
the experts. If you oppose this petition, you won’t be doing Mr. Craybill any
favors. He’s a sick old man who needs help.”

Sasha considered her response.
Braeburn was letting her know the local attorneys—and there couldn’t be many of
them—rolled over for one another at these hearings. She could see how that kind
of back-scratching might take hold in a community with a small bar.

Pittsburgh, in contrast, had a
large and active bar. In fact, Allegheny County had one of the highest
concentrations of attorneys per capita in the nation; the bar approached ten
thousand practicing attorneys. Mainly, because Pittsburgh was the kind of city
newcomers moved into gladly but natives had to be dragged kicking and screaming
to leave. She was a case in point.

No lawyer in Pittsburgh would
dare do what Braeburn was proposing, unless he or she was a fool. Even if a
lawyer was inclined to do it, the competition for clients was so fierce and the
risk that another lawyer would get wind of the situation and make a bar
complaint was too great.

Braeburn may not have known it,
but Judge Paulson had to have realized that Sasha wouldn’t be inclined to play
ball when he appointed her. Yes, she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong
time. But, Sasha was certain a call from the county’s only judge would have
sent any one of the local lawyers flying over to the courthouse to take Jed’s
case. She had to believe the judge had appointed her counsel precisely because
she was an outsider.

Braeburn stared at her,
waiting.

Sasha sighed. In the end, it
didn’t matter what Judge Paulson knew or thought he knew about her when he
ordered her to represent the angry old man storming his courtroom. She was who
she was. She hadn’t changed that for one of the largest, most prestigious law
firms in Pittsburgh and she sure wasn’t about to change it for some part-time
county solicitor.

“If, in fact, it is in Mr.
Craybill’s best interests to have a guardian appointed, then I’m sure you’ll
have no problem meeting the burden of proof on that issue. If the experts at
the Department of Aging Services can satisfy the court that Jed Craybill is
incapacitated, it won’t much matter if I oppose your petition, now will it?”
she said.

“But . . . you aren’t going to
consent?”  Braeburn’s voice cracked.

“No, Mr. Braeburn,” she said as
evenly as she could manage, “you’re going to have to make your case.”

She stepped past him and walked
back into the courtroom.

The sleepy-eyed deputy had
resumed his post alongside the flag, so she knew Judge Paulson would be making
his entrance soon.

She hurried to the table and
gave Jed’s arm a reassuring squeeze as she took her seat. Once she was settled,
she leaned over and whispered, “He wanted us to consent to the appointment of a
guardian so they wouldn’t have to present their case. Either there are a lot of
backroom deals around here or he’s worried he can’t meet his burden.”

Jed nodded. “Probably both.”

The door from the hallway swung
open and Braeburn trotted down the aisle. Sasha was delighted to notice that
his cheeks were flushed with either anger or embarrassment. She hoped both.

Braeburn looked over at her.
She could tell he was weighing whether to force the issue and make her switch
tables. She half hoped he’d do it, but he stood there for a minute and then
dropped his files on the defendant’s table. He took his seat just in time to
pop out of it when the door from chambers opened and Judge Paulson swept into
his courtroom.

“All rise. The Honorable
Harrison W. Paulson presiding.”

Usually, a courtroom became a
stage after the deputy opened court. In most courtrooms, in most cases, the
judge and the attorneys were actors. Everyone knew both their lines and
everybody else’s lines, and there were no surprises. Unless someone deviated
from the script. Even then, though—say, a witness got rattled and started
babbling something other than the answers the attorney had rehearsed with her
or an expert suddenly backed away from his opinion right there in open court—a
decent lawyer could do damage control. Ask a gentle leading question to get the
witness back on track or introduce a document to shore up the opinion.
Whatever. This hearing, however, was going to be more like a night of improv
than a well-rehearsed show.

Braeburn wasted no time
derailing the proceedings. As soon as the judge read the caption into the
record, before he could even ask Braeburn to present his case, the county
attorney leaned forward, his hand holding his tie flat against his chest, and
cleared his throat.

“If I may, your honor?  The
Department of Aging Services has just learned that Mr. Craybill is not going to
consent. In light of this eleventh-hour ambush. . . .” He paused here to shoot
Sasha a look, then he continued, “The County respectfully requests a
continuance to prepare its case.”

The judge frowned down at
Braeburn. He turned to Sasha but kept the frown in place.

“Ms. McCandless, what do you
have to say for yourself?”

Sasha blinked. Was this guy for
real?

The judge moved his chin, just
the barest bob, motioning toward the court reporter, as if to say, come on,
now, play along for the record.

She searched her brain for a
non-sarcastic response.

“Well, your honor, it’s true
that Mr. Craybill does not consent to having a guardian appointed. As for
counsel’s dramatic claims of ambush, I don’t know what to say. It’s his
petition. He shouldn’t have filed it until he was ready to have it heard.”

She decided not to mention that
she had been representing her client for all of one morning, as the court well
knew, and couldn’t have provided notice any sooner. Judges tended not to like
it when you sullied the record with facts that made them look bad.

Judge Paulson looked at her
with no expression. “Anything else?”

Sasha thought.

And then it hit her. “Actually,
yes, your honor. Even if Mr. Craybill were to consent, which, again, to be
clear, he does not—but if he did, that consent could not be valid. If he is
incompetent in the eyes of the law, then, without question, he’s not competent
to consent.”

The judge smiled and said,
“That’s an interesting point, Ms. McCandless. I have to agree. It makes one
pause and wonder what the attorneys who ask their clients to consent to a
finding of incompetence are thinking, doesn’t it, Mr. Braeburn?”

Braeburn’s face tensed. Sasha
watched his pulse throb in his neck. Judge Paulson’s eyebrows crept up his
forehead as he waited.

Braeburn smoothed his tie.
Picked up his pen. Put down his pen. Finally, he said, “Your honor, I am not
aware of any case law holding that a consented-to guardianship is prima facie
invalid.”

Weak sauce, Sasha thought.
Judging by the snort Jed let out and the expression on the judge’s face, she
was not alone.

Judge Paulson shook his head.
“That’s not particularly responsive, Mr. Braeburn; nor is it particularly
persuasive. Regardless, your request is denied. Let’s get started, shall we?”

Braeburn looked around the
courtroom but found no help in the empty gallery. He squared his shoulders and
said, “Respectfully, your honor, the Department of Aging Services believes its
petition sets out the grounds for declaring Mr. Craybill incapacitated and
appointing a guardian.”

Braeburn looked up at the judge,
expectant and eager. The judge looked back at him for a long moment.

“And?”

“Your honor?”  Braeburn asked,
blinking.

Judge Paulson sighed. “Marty,
obviously the county thinks Mr. Craybill needs to have a guardian appointed.
How about telling me the basis for that opinion?”