"Bullets are like waves, they only rearrange the sand.
History turns upon the tides and not the deeds of man."
-Robert Hunter, Down the Road, 1995
Discovery
Unbeknownst to Michael, the homeless man has an axe to grind with the firm. He follows Michael into the law offices where he draws a gun on him and eight of the firm's bulldog litigators, and a hostage situation ensues:
Michael hits the pavement for answers. His search brings him to the 14th Street Legal Clinic, a bare knuckled law office that specializes in pro bono work for the disenfranchised. Their only requirement: You have to be homeless. Enter Mordecai Green.
Mordecai is chief counsel at the clinic. Not taken to titles, in the eyes of this law practice social workers have equal bearing to lawyers. Through Mordecai, Michael learns the reason behind Mister's hostage scenario. The landlord of a dilapidated warehouse with hasty partitions, doors and shared toilets was charging the homeless the rock bottom price of $100 per month cash for a safe place to crash out of the weather. Hardly the humanitarian, when the federal government offers to buy the structure as a teardown for a new postal facility, the landlord (a shady businessman named Tillman Gantry) jumps at it. But, the deal must close within thirty days. Tenant law being what it is requires thirty days notice to evict, time Gantry didn't have. So he does what any self-respecting businessman servicing a faceless, under-represented clientele would do: He claims they're squatters and has them kicked to the street. Mister was one of those so-called squatters.
and as he yanked open the door saying 'What the hell?'
the [gun] barrel swung from me to him, and the man with
the rubber boots had exactly what he wanted."
Trial
The firm presents a statistical chart of trending figures awarded in death settlements, dollar amounts not even close to what Mordecai has in mind. Low blow number one. Then they try their luck with the judge by blaming the victims, leaving the reader to wonder if it's a negotiating tactic, or if these ivory tower lawyers believe their own words. Low blow number two. Can the men and women licensed to defend the law be that out of touch? Have their seven figure salaries compromised the process?
Reward
Grisham, at his best when he's writing about the counselors he's fought in the trenches with - whether they be hawks or doves - lands a solid punch with Street Lawyer. And for a guy who never gave much thought to homelessness, it marks a watershed.
posted 02/19/16
TAKING it to THE STREET
The Street Lawyer
by John Grisham
Dell Publishing, 1998
ISBN: 0-440-22570-1
$7.99, 452 pp
In the Author's Note, John Grisham states that prior to writing The Street Lawyer he hadn't given much thought to homelessness. Well, he is from Mississippi where they don't appear to give much thought to social issues (the state didn't officially ratify the 14th amendment until 2013). However,
the confession seems inexcusable coming from a writer with a law background in a nation that propels the myth we are all equal under the law, and displays a level of naivete about socio-economic inequality when it comes to the courts.
Street Lawyer opens inside the elevator of swanky Washington, D.C. law firm Drake & Sweeney. The novel's protagonist (Michael Brock) is sharing the lift with a homeless person and has the typical urbanite response to such street urchins: He doesn't really look at him, but he smells him. Homelessness, Grisham drives home in this scene, is a faceless nuisance best ignored.
Eight hard-nosed and fearless litigators who spent their hours chewing up people. The toughest was a scrappy little torpedo named Rafter, and as he yanked open the door saying "What the hell?" the barrel swung from me to him, and the man with the rubber boots had exactly what he wanted.
Twenty-two pages later, the booted man is shot dead by a SWAT sniper. Michael, having been standing directly behind him at the time of impact, is covered in blood and pieces of bone and flesh. It's a harrowing experience for the young lawyer, and one that over the next few days evolves into an epiphany. He's not fulfilled in his marriage, the promise of materialism isn't filling the void, and the question of why Mister (the name he gives the dead homeless guy) did what he did pervades his every waking hour. He needs answers, and he needs them fast.
As the facts of the eviction reveal themselves, things get interesting. Turns out Drake & Sweeney's real estate department represent the developers, and unbeknownst to the firm's upper echelon, the evictions were done with full knowledge of their illegality, exposing Drake & Sweeney to legal recourse. Mordecai is chomping at the bit for a jury trial (he's got a major sympathy card in his pocket; a mother and her four children who froze to death after being evicted), but Drake & Sweeney want none of it. It's not their first trip to the rodeo, so they hunker down.
As Mordecai continues pushing for a jury trial, cracks appear in Drake & Sweeney's defense. Mordecai holds the proverbial smoking gun in the form of a rent receipt made out to the dead woman, and being a veteran of street law he knows how to find the other evicted tenants to call as witnesses. There no longer is a question of blame; the only question is money:
[Mordecai] disputed their view that a dead child was worth only fifty thousand dollars. He implied rather strongly that such a low estimate was the result of a prejudice against homeless street children who happened to be black . . . "I can convince a jury in this courtroom that these little children were worth at least a million dollars each, same as any child in the prep schools of Virginia and Maryland."
Grisham's background in law provides a fascinating look at the processes of the American justice system. At times the reader wants to look away - there's a naive wish, I think, by everybody that the system is just. And, often it is, depending on one's perspective. In the end, justice is served in Street Lawyer, but it sure takes a meandering, eye-opening course to arrive there.
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