“You readPride and Prejudicefanfic?” asked Lindsay.
Evan shrugged. “I would have paired Darcy with Wickham, personally. I bet they’d have a lot of angry sex.”
“How are we talking about gay sex in Jane Austen?” asked Lauren.
“Look, I reread the book last month, it gave me ideas,” said Evan. “It totally holds up, by the way. If you haven’t read it since high school, I recommend giving it another look.”
Paige laughed, glad for a distracting conversation.
* * *
Josh watched the sunset from the conference room window, but he wasn’t even that mad about it.
In the five days since Penny had first presented the medical manufacturer case to Josh, he’d dug up a number of old cases that generally showed courts ruled in favor of the manufacturer more often than not. He’d worked out that the key to holding the company accountable was to prove the company knowingly sold a bad product or had at least knowingly cut corners.
Penny had managed to find some examples of negligence, including the factory floor being monitored by company flunkies who didn’t understand manufacturing and parts being purchased from overseas on the cheap without anyone bothering to verify that the parts were safe to use.
“We’re standing on solid ground,” Josh told her. “I found this case in Pennsylvania in which several patients sued a medical manufacturer because there had been electrical issues with a sleep monitoring device. The court found for the prosecution in that case because they managed to prove that the manufacturer had been using cheap parts to save money, but the wires were corroded. I think the fact that all of the people who worked for that manufacturer were making exorbitant salaries and the company was using cheap parts out of sheer greed also helped convince the jury that the manufacturer was at fault.”
Penny nodded. “Good work. I agree, there’s definitely a case here. Criminally negligent homicide will be hard to prove, but I think we should go for it. I don’t believe these guys wanted anyone to die, but they had to know that using cheap parts in medical devices could lead to injuries. I don’t know about you, but if I had to get a hip replaced, I’d want the highest quality replacement parts, you know?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
Penny wrote some notes while Josh looked on. Then he said, “Can I ask you a weird question?”
“Shoot.”
He took a deep breath. “What made you leave DCL and go to the DA’s office?”
Penny looked up and smiled. “Honestly, a lot of it was that I hated most of the sleazes Provost represents.”
Josh nodded. “I’ve only been working here a few months, but I have to say, my first experience in court was defending a guy who deserves to be out of business. And we’re currently representing a real estate developer who I kind of want to punch in the face. Is that a bad thing to say?”
Penny laughed. “No. My first year, we defended both an insider trader and a politician who got caught using campaign money to buy presents for his mistress. They’re not all winners.”
Josh pointed to his notes. “This case, this is more what I was looking to do when I studied law.”
Penny nodded. “When I worked here, Provost had another associate who was whipsmart, but it quickly became clear she hated the actual practice of law. I think she actually only went to law school because she wanted to get into politics. She quit after six months to go work for the mayor’s reelection campaign. Which, you know, good for her, but she’s drowning in law school debt. I always tell people, don’t go to law school unless you want to be a lawyer. It’s not worth it otherwise.”
Josh laughed. “I went to law school with a few of those, too. And that’s excellent advice. But why the DA’s office?”
“It was a big pay cut, but the work is so much more rewarding. I got to be second chair on the Saperstein case last year.”
Josh whistled. That case had made big headlines. Saperstein was a television producer and serial rapist who had preyed on young starlets for decades before anyone found the guts to prosecute him. He’d been found guilty and was currently serving a twenty-year sentence upstate. “That’s amazing. It must have been rewarding to put him away.”
“It was. I was proud of my work on that case.” She glanced at her notes. “Are you thinking about switching teams and becoming a prosecutor?”
“The thought crossed my mind. I want to stick this out for at least a year, but I have days when I want to quit. It’s a lot of hours and, yeah, Provost defends some sleazy people. But this case is really interesting and, you know, I like being able to pay down my debt every month.”
Penny smiled. “Well, just know that we could use someone with your research skills at the DA’s office. And Provost says you write a mean brief.”
Josh laughed. “I suppose that’s true.”
“Your help here has been invaluable. If you ever want to join the dark side, I’d be happy to put in a word for you with the DA. He is usually not a part of the hiring process directly, but he likes to have final say. And you’d have to work your way up. I work in major crimes now, but I was stuck in misdemeanors for a while, mostly issuing fines to kids who stayed in the parks after they closed. So it’s not all glitz and glamour.”
Josh laughed. “I was going to make an argument like, ‘Well at least you’re helping people,’ but I didn’t know until just now that the parks ever closed, so probably you weren’t doing a lot to help people in those cases.”
“Yeah, no, not really. Every now and then a trafficking case would get thrown my way, and those were kind of interesting. One of my law school classmates works for the Department of Labor and mostly prosecutes people who defraud the unemployment benefits system, but even then, a lot of the defendants in her cases are people who filled out a form incorrectly and aren’t actually guilty of fraud. So I’m not saying working for the city is the best job in the world. And the hours are just as bad most of the time. And there’s less money in it. But I do get to go after bad guys sometimes, and that is very rewarding.”