Chapter 45
Washington, D.C., Spring 2019
Paul Farrell was something of a worrying puzzle to his colleagues. He could be warm and charming and wonderfully erudite. Few people were as well-read, and he peppered his speech and legal briefs with historical references from the Roman campaigns to World War II. He was a serious student of The Art of War; he had a dozen different translations. And he studied his Bible and the Western philosophers, from Plato to Rousseau, with equal fervor.
Paul could also be obnoxious and crass. He seemed to pride himself on being the outsider, but he frequently failed to read the room and what he thought of as tactical aggression others viewed as belligerence. His behavior was sometimes unrestrained—and problematic.
Paul sent long sarcastic emails to the defense. “Dear Purveyors of Opium Pills,” he wrote at the top of one communication sent to every member of the defense team. In court, he theatrically twisted his face in disapproval or rolled his eyes when a judge or a defense lawyer made a point he didn’t like. He couldn’t help himself. After the executive committee selected Mark Lanier to be the lead trial counsel in the Cleveland case, Paul appeared in the war room wearing the jersey of New England Patriots star cornerback Malcolm Butler. Moments before the start of the Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles in 2018, Patriots coach Bill Belichick had unceremoniously benched Butler. The Patriots would wind up losing the game.
“I’ve been benched,” Paul said as he walked around the war room in Butler’s jersey.
Paul Hanly was growing tired of the antics, which he viewed as self-defeating. In the end, Hanly thought, they need to reach a deal with the defense, so there was no advantage in needlessly antagonizing their opponents. Better to try to understand their bottom line.
“Why are you using such aggressive language?” he asked Paul.
“Because they’re a bunch of sleazeballs,” Paul replied.
“Okay, but the way to get ahead is not by getting in the gutter,” Hanly said. “It’s to try to find a way to move our clients’ cases forward.”
Some of the younger members of Paul’s team enjoyed the antics. They thought they lightened the room, injecting humor into the drudgery of the nonstop legal work. But Hanly, Jayne Conroy, and the other veterans of the team worried that Paul’s escapades might backfire one day.
On May 16, they did—risking the wrath of the special master whose decisions had a major impact on the course of the litigation.
Paul was at the Washington Plaza Hotel in downtown D.C., where he and Mike Fuller were preparing to take a deposition in the case. It was after nine in the evening. Documents were spread across the beds, on the window shelves, on the cabinets and the floors of the room. A young associate at Williams & Connolly, who was representing Cardinal, had written to David Cohen, the special master assigned to help Judge Polster manage the litigation. The associate, Suzanne Salgado, sought to limit the scope of the deposition, and Fuller wrote to Cohen asking him to reject her argument, saying it “does not hold water.”
Paul recalled a scene from one of his favorite comedies, My Cousin Vinny. Joe Pesci plays an incompetent, wisecracking lawyer from New York City. His cousin and his friend have been wrongly accused of murder in Alabama. Pesci’s character heads south with his fiancée, played by Marisa Tomei, to defend the two young men. In the climactic courtroom scene of the movie, Pesci’s character realizes that his fiancée holds the key to winning the case. He calls her to the witness stand, her dark hair tossed and teased, a galaxy of metallic studs splashed across her dress.
“Does the defense’s case hold water?” Pesci’s character asks her.
“No! The defense is wrong!” she says, beaming.
Ten minutes after Fuller replied to Cohen, Paul emailed a photograph of Tomei from the movie to every lawyer on the defense and plaintiffs’ teams. Someone complained to Cohen, accusing Paul of being misogynistic. Whoever complained apparently hadn’t seen My Cousin Vinny, but they did notice a resemblance between Tomei and the Williams & Connolly associate.
Within an hour, Cohen called Paul.
“You can’t do that,” the special master told him. “This is a different world. You can’t be making derogatory comments.”
“I’m not making derogatory comments,” Paul said. “It’s from My Cousin Vinny.”
“Well, apparently there are some people who haven’t seen the movie and they thought you were making derogatory, misogynist comments.”
“But she was the hero of the movie,” Paul offered.
“Paul, I’m telling you right now, you need to send an apology.”
At 2:55 the next morning, Paul wrote to Cohen and the defense team. “I was making the not-so-funny point that Cardinal Health’s argument does not hold water with a picture of the actress gloating,” Paul wrote. “Please accept my sincere apologies. [Special Master] Cohen reminded me there is no place in this litigation for snarky humor. This case and its implications are too important.”
Some members of his trial team were amused, but others thought it was a juvenile move. It was embarrassing to be schooled like a child by a special master. For all his smarts, Paul could be his own worst enemy. It wouldn’t be the last time.