The king of grievances

This novel focuses on Jarrett Clay Carter II’s struggle as a lowly, low-paid attorney in the Office of the Public Defender (OPD). He dreams of succeeding one day, but the break, so to speak, is not so close. Represents clients charged with a criminal offense but unable to pay for legal services.

Reluctantly, he takes on the case of Tequila Watson, a man accused of a random street murder. Unknown to Clay Carter at the time, the case would catapult him into the biggest breakup he could imagine. A pharmaceutical conspiracy was underway and Tequila Watson is just one of the human guinea pigs for the drug “Tarvan.” The drug supposedly helps drug addicts recover, but it has a major flaw, in 10% of its patients, the drug leads to violent random killings. To keep everything a secret, the drug’s maker, Clay Carter’s employees, with the help of Max Pace. Clay Carter, who resigned as a Tequila Watson attorney, left his job at the Public Defender’s Office, took on some of his trusted colleagues at OPD, and established his own law firm. Clay Carter now became the attorney for the mysterious pharmaceutical company. They identified the victims of the Tarvan-induced “random killings” and paid the victim’s heirs with 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, despite its effectiveness in controlling pain, it causes bladder tumors. This case prompted him to launch a new career at Mass Tort Law. He started raising millions of dollars in commissions. His meteoric rise to fame and fortune earned him the title of King of Newest Grudge.

The rise and fall of fame and the process server

Surprise is an element that Clay Carter relied heavily on in his presentation of the Dyloft case. Simultaneously with its filing in court, a process server had delivered a copy of the complaint to the defendant company, Ackerman Labs. In these types of cases where the time element is part of the strategy, a competent process server, effective and reliable is the best person to have on the team.

Like all comet with its meteoric rise to stardom and spectacular atmospheric display, it is fleeting. And at some point it will eventually fall somewhere. Clay Carter, in the short span of a few months, had acquired a luxurious home in a prominent part of town, a villa somewhere in the French islands, a black Porsche Carrera sports car, a Gulfstream private jet, a yacht, hundreds of million in fees.

In a series of wrong decisions, Clay Carter had been subjected to a massive negligence lawsuit. He resolved the thousands of Dyloft mass tort cases he had with Ackerman Labs quickly at a small amount per client. 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 evaluate the effects of the drug on each and every client.

With all of Clay Carter’s resources, there is a protective bubble layer around him. With a jet and yacht close at hand, you are considered a flight risk. With this in mind, the process server who served Clay Carter with his career-ending malpractice lawsuit was able to penetrate security and was able to schedule his visit to deliver it to him personally.

It’s a bit ironic, if not appropriate, that in this novel, the unrecognized constant is a process server that has done its job well.