Day 2 Morning After-break Court

You were just sitting down as Judge Mathews called the ‘court’ back to order. Eric was shifting through his files, readying his arguments for his new Motion to Dismiss in case things went the way that you all were expecting. Sabrina and Gemma, meanwhile, were preparing for the final witness since they were going to handle the objections on this one. You and Eric had taken all of the ‘fact’ based ones, and the girls had agreed to handle the one that was likely to require the most exacting attention to detail.

“May it please the Court, Your Honour, the Plaintiff calls Mr Davis Polk to the stand.”

Sabrina had the dossier for Davis Polk in front of her, and it was fairly large even though he had almost nothing to do with the actual case. Polk was an ex-employee of your clients and, according to the records, had testified twice before against DeLittle Insurance and seemed to be making his own little cottage business doing it.

Polk was being played by Edgar Talbot, one of the associates from the firm, and he mounted the stage and took to the witness stand to be sworn in. Thomas, the short and angry member of the opposition, was the one who seemed to be trying to orchestrate their ‘grand narrative’ strategy against the Insurance industry so it made sense that he was the member of the opposition who got things rolling.

Gemma registered three objections to the first three attempts Thomas made to ask Polk a question.

The first was Leading, as Thomas attempted to bulldoze into his narrative with what would have been the softest soft-pitch question ever. The second was Speculation as Thomas tried to pivot to a different opening that would have allowed Polk to talk out of his ass about the ‘intent’ of DeLittle insurance. The third was Relevance as Thomas tried to pivot again, this time asking about Polk’s interaction with the CEO of DeLittle. That one came out of left field - there was nothing about Polk and your client’s CEO interacting in the files.

You quickly scribbled ‘Hidden Info again,’ onto a scrap of paper in front of Gemma and she grimaced and nodded. Sabrina, on her other side this time, was using a sheet of paper with all the common Objections labelled and pens to point to the ones that seemed relevant to help Gemma keep track. Meanwhile, poor Thomas was starting to turn a little red.

“Your Honour, I need to be allowed to ask questions to conduct the business of defending my client,” he complained.

“I agree, Mr Malberry,” Judge Mathews said. “Perhaps you should consider asking questions that fall within the rules of the court - I don’t believe Miss Anderson is interested in giving you any leeway here.”

Thomas grimaced and shot a look at your table, then turned back to the Judge. “Thank you, Your Honour,” he said, and Gemma echoed him.

Thomas rolled back his aggressiveness and started back up with short, introductory questions. He got about four in.

“Objection, your Honour,” Gemma said, standing up. “Relevance.”

“I’m trying to establish relevance, your Honour if I could have a chance please!?” Thomas whined.

“Overruled, but only for the moment,” Judge Mathews ruled.

“Thank you, Your Honour,” both ‘lawyers’ said.

“Mr Polk, as an insurance adjuster, did you ever receive a direct order to circumvent a contract?” Thomas asked.

“No, never a direct order,” Polk answered.

“But you received an indirect one?”

“There was a sort of vibe in the office,” Polk said. “You’d hear things, right?”

“Objection, Your Honour,” Gemma said, standing up again. “Blatant hearsay.”

“Mr Polk,” Judge Mathews said, turning to the witness stand. “Please only answer questions about things you personally witnessed. ‘Vibes’ and whispered rumours from anonymous sources will not be accepted by the court.”

“Yes, Your Honour,” Polk agreed.

The Examination went on, and it didn’t get any prettier. You lost count of the number of objections, and it seemed like Gemma was trying to varr which one she was using so that things didn’t get repetitive. And she ran the gambit - compound question, vague and ambiguous, foundation, improper lay opinion, prejudicial, assumes facts not in evidence.

Every time the Judge ruled in Gemma’s favour, and every time Thomas would get one slight shade more red.

It went on for two hours.

By the time he gave up, Thomas was beet red, sweating and had a vein in his forehead that looked like it was going to burst at any moment. He’d gotten maybe fifteen questions out of hundreds of attempts answered. His entire game plan for his ‘the insurance industry is evil and the court should side against them’ hinged on Davis Polk, and the best he’d gotten on record was his name, the fact that he previously worked at DeLittle Insurance and that Polk had been ‘disgusted’ by his time there.

“I believe that’s lunch,” Judge Mathews said as Thomas went to sit down. “Unless Counsel for the Defence believes they can wrap up their cross-examination in under fifteen minutes?”

“We’ll only need two, your Honour,” Sabrina said confidently.

“Well then, Miss Sodemeyer,” Judge Mathews said. “Please commence.”

Sabrina stood up and went through the handover process with all the proper phrases, then took a breath. “Mr Polk, did you ever receive a memo, email or any form of documentation that DeLittle Insurance was seeking to defraud their customers?”

“Well, no,” ‘Polk’ said. “Not, uh, like that.”

“Did you ever receive any direct instructions from a superior within the company, whether that be a direct supervisor or someone in the C-Suit of the company, to defraud DeLittle Insurance clients?”

“That’s not really how it would work-” he started.

“Do you have any direct evidence, whatsoever, of the libellous claims you make against DeLittle Insurance?”

‘Polk’ sneered, Edgar doing a good job with the acting, and then grimaced. “Nothing that this sham of a court would accept. You’re all on the take from the Insurance agenda, no one listens to me-”

“That will be all, Your Honour,” Sabrina said curtly.

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