The settlement, meager as it was, had been completed against his wishes. A paltry $43,000, with the lawyer taking the rest! He had called and called and finally got some young smart mouth who told him to check the fine print in the pile of documents he’d signed. There was a Preauthorization clause that allowed the attorney to settle if the money exceeded a very low threshold. Mr. Worley had fired off two poisonous letters to Mr. Clay Carter, neither of which provoked a response.

“I was against the settlement,” Mr. Worley kept saying.

“I guess it’s too late now,” Mrs. Worley kept adding.

“Maybe not,” the doctor said. He told them about the Kansas City patient, a man very similar to Ted Worley. “He’s hired a lawyer to go after his lawyer,” the doctor said with great satisfaction.

“I’ve had a butt full of lawyers,” Mr. Worley said. Doctors too, for that matter, but he held his tongue.

“Do you have his phone number?” Mrs. Worley asked. She was thinking much more clearly than her husband. Sadly, she was also looking down the road a year or two when Ted would be gone.

The urologist just happened to have the number.

The only thing mass tort lawyers feared was one of their own. A predator. A traitor who followed behind fixing their mistakes. A subspecialty had evolved in which a few very good and very nasty trial lawyers pursued their brethren for bad settlements. Helen Warshaw was writing the training manual.

For a breed that professed so much love for the courtroom, tort lawyers fell limp with the visual of themselves sitting at the defense table, looking sheepishly at the jurors as their personal finances were kicked about in open court. It was Helen Warshaw’s calling to get them there.

However, it rarely happened. Their cries of Sue the World! and We Love Juries! evidently applied to everyone else. When confronted with proof of liability, no one settled faster than a mass tort lawyer. No one, not even a guilty doctor, dodged the courtroom with as much energy as a TV/billboard lawyer caught scamming a settlement.

Warshaw had four Dyloft cases in her New York office and leads on three more when she received the call from Mrs. Worley. Her small firm had a file on Clay Carter and a much thicker one on Patton French. She monitored the top twenty or so mass tort firms in the country and dozens of the biggest class actions. She had plenty of clients and lots of fees, but nothing had excited her as much as the Dyloft fiasco.

A few minutes on the phone with Mrs. Worley, and Helen knew exactly what had happened. “I’ll be there by five o’clock,” she said.

“Today?”

“Yes. This afternoon.”

She caught the shuttle to Dulles. She did not have her own jet, for two very good reasons. First, she was prudent with her money and didn’t believe in such waste. Second, if she ever got sued, she did not want the jury to hear about a jet. The year before, in the only case she’d managed to get to trial, she had shown the jury large color photos of the defendant lawyer’s jets, both of them, inside and out. Along with photos of his yacht, Aspen home, etcetera. The jury had been very impressed. Twenty million in punitive damages.

She rented a car—no limo—and found the hospital in Bethesda. Mrs. Worley had collected their papers, which Warshaw spent an hour with while Mr. Worley took a nap. When he woke up, he did not want to talk. He was wary of lawyers, especially the pushy New York female variety. However, his wife had plenty of time and found it easier to confide in a woman. The two went to the lounge for coffee and a long discussion.

The principal culprit was and always would be Ackerman Labs. They made a bad drug, rushed the approval process, advertised it heavily, failed to adequately test it, failed to fully disclose everything they knew about it. Now the world was learning that Dyloft was even more insidious than first thought. Ms. Warshaw had already secured convincing medical proof that recurring tumors were linked to Dyloft.

The second culprit was the doctor who prescribed the drug, though his culpability was slight. He relied on Ackerman Labs. The drug worked wonders. And so on.

Unfortunately, the first two culprits had been fully and completely released from all liability when Mr. Worley settled his claim in the Biloxi class action. Though Mr. Worley’s arthritis doctor had not been sued, the global release covered him as well.

“But Ted didn’t want to settle,” Mrs. Worley said more than once.

Doesn’t matter. He settled. He gave his attorney the power to settle. The attorney did so, and thus became the third culprit. And the last one standing.

A week later, Ms. Warshaw filed a lawsuit against J. Clay Carter, F. Patton French, M. Wesley Saulsberry, and all other known and unknown attorneys who had prematurely settled Dyloft cases. The lead plaintiff was once again Mr. Ted Worley from Upper Marlboro, Maryland, for and on behalf of all injured persons, known and unknown at the time. The lawsuit was filed in United States District Court for the District of Columbia, not too far from the JCC offices.

Borrowing a page from the defendants’ own playbook, Ms. Warshaw faxed copies of her lawsuit to a dozen prominent newspapers fifteen minutes after she filed it.

A brusque and burly process server presented himself to the receptionist at Clay’s office and demanded to see Mr. Carter. “It’s urgent,” he insisted. He was sent down the hall where he had to deal with Miss Glick. She summoned her boss, who reluctantly came from his office and took possession of the paperwork that would ruin his day. Maybe his year.

The reporters were already calling by the time Clay finished reading the class action. Oscar Mulrooney was with him; the door was locked. “I’ve never heard of this,” Clay mumbled, painfully aware that there was so much he didn’t know about the mass tort game.

Nothing wrong with a good ambush, but at least the companies he had sued knew they had trouble brewing. Ackerman Labs knew it had a bad drug before Dyloft hit the market. Hanna Portland Cement Company had people on the ground in Howard County assessing the initial claims. Goffman had already been sued by Dale Mooneyham over Maxatil, and other trial lawyers were circling. But this? Clay had had no idea that Ted Worley was sick again. Not a hint of trouble anywhere in the country. It just wasn’t fair.

Mulrooney was too stunned to speak.

Through the intercom Miss Glick announced, “Clay, there’s a reporter here from the Washington Post.”

“Shoot the bastard,” Clay growled.

“Is that a ‘No’?”

“It’s a ‘Hell no!’”

“Tell him Clay’s not here,” Oscar managed to say.

“And call security,” Clay added.

The tragic death of a close friend could not have caused a more somber mood. They talked about spin control—how to respond, and when? Should they quickly put together an aggressive denial to the lawsuit and file it that day? Fax copies to the press? Should Clay talk to the reporters?

Nothing was decided because they could not make a decision. The shoe was on the other foot; this was new territory.

Oscar volunteered to spread the news around the firm, spinning everything in a positive light to keep morale up.

“If I’m wrong, I’ll pay the claim,” Clay said.

“Let’s hope Mr. Worley is the only one from this firm.”

“That’s the big question, Oscar. How many Ted Worleys are out there?”

Sleep was impossible. Ridley was in St. Barth, renovating the villa, and for that Clay was grateful. He was humiliated and embarrassed; at least she didn’t know about it.

His thoughts were on Ted Worley. He was not angry, far from it. Allegations in lawsuits are famously off the mark, but these sounded accurate. His former client would not be claiming to have malignant tumors if they did not actually exist. Mr. Worley’s cancer was caused by a bad drug, not by a bad lawyer. But to hurriedly settle a case for $62,000 when it was ultimately worth millions smacked of malpractice and greed. Who could blame the man for striking back?