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the king of grievances
This novel focuses on Jarrett Clay Carter II’s struggle as a humble, underpaid lawyer in the Office of Public Defender (OPD). He dreams of one day succeeding, but rest, as it were, does not come. Represents clients accused of a criminal offense but unable to pay for legal services.
He reluctantly takes on the case of Tequila Watson, a man accused of a random street murder. Unbeknownst to Clay Carter at the time, the case would catapult him into the greatest opportunity he could ever imagine. A pharmaceutical conspiracy was brewing, and Tequila Watson is just one of the human guinea pigs for the drug “Tarvan.” The drug supposedly helps drug addicts to recover, but it has a major flaw, in 10% of its patients, the drug leads to random violent murders. To keep everything a secret, the drug manufacturer hires Clay Carter, with the help of Max Pace. Clay Carter, who resigned as Tequila Watson’s attorney, quit his job at the Public Defender’s Office, took on some of his trusted colleagues at OPD and set up his own law firm. Clay Carter has now become the lawyer for the mysterious pharmaceutical company. They identified the victims of the Tarvan-induced “random killings” and paid the victim’s heirs in large settlements.
Clay Carter soon took up the case for another drug, “Dyloft,” a powerful anti-inflammatory drug used by people with acute arthritis. However, as effective as it is in curbing pain, it causes tumors in the bladder. This case prompted him to start a new career at Mass Tort Law. He began collecting millions of dollars in fees. His meteoric rise to fame and fortune earned him the title of the new King of Tort.
The rise and fall of fame and the process server
Surprise is an element that Clay Carter relied heavily on in presenting the Dyloft case. Simultaneously with its filing in court, a process server delivered a copy of the complaint to the defendant company, Ackerman Labs. In this type of case where the time element is part of the strategy, a competent, effective and reliable process server He is the best person to have on the team.
Like everything comet with its meteoric rise to stardom and its spectacular atmospheric display, it is fleeting. And at some point it will eventually fall somewhere. Clay Carter, in the brief span of a few months, had acquired a luxurious home in a prominent part of town, a villa somewhere in the French Isles, a black Porsche Carrera sports car, a Gulfstream private jet, a yacht, hundreds of millions in fees.
In a series of wrong decisions, Clay Carter had been subjected to a massive malpractice lawsuit. He resolved the thousands of massive Dyloft incorrect cases he had with Ackerman Labs quickly at a small amount per customer. Although he received millions of dollars in fees, individual clients received a negligible sum. Since all of this was done in record time, he was unable to fully assess the effects of the drug on each and every client.
With all of Clay Carter’s resources, there’s a protective bubble wrap around him. With a jet and yacht on hand, he’s considered a flight risk. With this in mind, the process server who served Clay Carter with the professional malpractice suit that ended his career was able to penetrate security and schedule a visit to deliver it personally.
It’s a bit ironic, if not appropriate, that in this novel, the unrecognized constant is a process server that had done its job well.
