Chapter 9: Weapons and Arsenals

We arrived at Bob’s office at 3:15 and went up. His receptionist greeted us.

“Oh, Linda didn’t say you’d have someone with you. She’s in room 410, go that way.”

We went to the indicated door and on into the room. A middle-aged lady sat there surrounded by four monitors and loads of papers.

“Hi, you’re Kevin, right? You didn’t mention a friend.”

“Ah, forgot, sorry. I was rushing between classes. This is Denise Roberts and she’s one of the people I need to discuss with Mr Charlesworth.”

“Hello, Denise. I’m Linda Jameson, Mr Charlesworth’s executive assistant. Sorry for the mess; we’re closing a big case this week and this is the detritus.” She saw me staring at the electronics. “Oh, that stuff? Only one is my computer. I have only one head, after all. The others are terminals for the legal databases and the Bloomberg business line. They’re not on line and subscriptions cost bundles. You need special monitors to access them. Anyway, nice to finally meet you, Kevin. I think Mr Charlesworth is ready now; let me check.”

She did, he was, and she opened his door to let us in.

He stood up as we entered and came around his desk, briefly looking at Denise and shooting a glance toward Linda, who shrugged slightly.

“Kevin Coris, at last we meet,” he said, shaking my hand warmly with a firm grip. He put his other hand on my shoulder. “I feel as if I’ve known you for years; your file was so detailed and your dad told me all about you. I’m so very sorry for your loss; Dan Carpenter told me how very proud your father was of you. And who’s your charming friend?”

“Mr Charlesworth, thanks for your kind words and your condolences. This is my classmate, Denise Roberts, and her problem in school is one of the major ones I need to discuss.”

“Kevin, please call me Bob, or Robert, but I prefer Bob. Save you some breath, too,” he grinned. “Guys, please have a seat,” he indicated as he returned to his to sit down.

I looked at him closely now. He was looking back at me with a cooly analytical gaze, eyes flicking quickly between mine, then my mouth, the set of my shoulders, my hands, my legs ... he was reading my body language! He was watching to see how I would react to his examination of my state of mind, as telegraphed by my body. I centered myself, relaxed, and gazed back at him serenely. This guy is really good, I thought. He’s actually dangerous, like a mind-reader. Wow! He’s trying to get inside me to test me. I can see why he has such a great rep.

Then he suddenly sat up a bit more erectly and said, “Kevin, very good. Very, very good. I’ve had very, very few people do what you did; you knew exactly what I was doing and you responded exactly right. Impressive. In reading your file, I noticed your study of the Arts, particularly taekwondo, and saw you’re a first dan, after first reaching a third poon. After seeing you just now, I’d think that mentally, anyway, you’re at least fourth dan.”

“Sir, you know taekwondo?”

“I have some small skill in the Art. In all humility, I allow myself to hold a seventh dan.”

Oh my God, he’s a Master. No wonder he could do that. I bowed my head and made the appropriate gesture.

“It’s my very great honor to meet you, Sahyun nim; forgive my lack of proper courtesy and forms when we first met.”

He made the appropriate response and waved his hand with a chuckle. “Not necessary, Kevin, we’re not in the dojang now.”

Meanwhile, Denise had been watching our byplay, her head whipping back and forth at us. I thought she’d get a whiplash.

“Uh, can I ask for a translation? I got some of that, but what just happened?”

“Denise, Sahyun ... uh, sir, is it still ok to call you Bob? Thanks. Bob is a Master of the Art of taekwondo. You know what I did today with Abover?” She nodded. “Well, a master of Bob’s stature could do the same, but against three opponents. Blindfolded. With a hand tied behind him.”

“Oh my!” Her hand flew to her mouth.

Bob laughed. “He exaggerates. Well, perhaps a little. In the highest dans—that’s levels, or belts—some of the masters spar blindfolded. The idea is to try to sense your opponent’s location, posture, and movements. A first dan is the first level of the black belt ranks going up to nine. The poons are junior-level black belt levels for children under 16 years. They have basically the same skill levels as the dans, but poons don’t spar against adults because they’re too small. Oh—a dojang is just Korean for ‘gym.’”

“Denise, Bob was testing me—you know, the fly under the microscope? He was reading my body language, trying to unnerve me, to get under my skin. My response was to blank him out so he’d only read white noise.”

Bob grinned at my explanation.

“Oh, that’s not nice, Mr Charlesworth!”

“Please, Denise. It’s Bob. All we were doing is what dogs do, sniffing each other out, seeing who’s gonna be the top dog. If I’m going to be working closely with Kevin, as I’m looking forward with great interest to doing, I need to know where his weaknesses lie. So far I don’t see any and that’s a rarity, especially at his age.”

“Well, if you wanted to see how Kevin operates, you should have been in the principal’s office this morning. He was astounding.”

“Yes, I’d really like to hear about that.”

I let Denise do the play-by-play, breaking in only when her hyperbole became too great to let pass. When she finished, Bob had a broad grin.

“Well, the way she describes it, sounds like your goon friend encountered the Spiderman and then Mr Spock dropped in to conduct the negotiation. This is priceless. And yes, I know about the Program; my son was on it last spring and the stuff in it really riled him and bothered me too. It wasn’t at your school. He did the absolute bare (oops, sorry) minimum stuff in it; they threatened him several times—like he should ask for Relief in class more—they need to keep track of that? Anyway, after reading your file, I figured that when you learned about the Program, you’d step in to try to make changes. I never dreamed you’d get thrown into it first thing, though.”

“Bob, excuse me, but I nearly forgot. Don’t we need to discuss your fees?”

“Oh, sorry—no, that’s my fault. I felt that I’ve known you so long I actually forgot this was our first meeting. Kevin, I’m on retainer—actually, my whole firm is. What that means is that your dad arranged for us to provide you unlimited legal services—well, up to a point—during your high school and college years. We’re paid out of some fund he set up in Indonesia, from its interest, apparently, so the principal isn’t diminished. Your family is very, very wealthy, you know.”

Denise’s hand flew to her mouth. I said, “Denise, please, you never heard that, ok?”

“‘k,” she squeaked.

“So Kevin, all of my fees are paid if you use my services or if you don’t. The only billable items are externals, like, as examples, plane fares, expert witness fees, remote depositions, and the like. The retainer does pay for court filing fees, other court costs, stenographers and transcripts, and similar items. Understand? Ok. Now let’s get to work. What’s the most difficult of your problems?”

“Oh, I think that’s a easy one to identify. It’s Denise. Could you tell Bob as best you can why you can’t be on the Program?”

She began haltingly to tell her story as Bob asked her gentle questions, drawing out her descriptions and probing her tactfully. Wow. As forceful and direct he had been earlier, he was now so gentle, caring, and empathetic in his approach. He also asked her a lot of questions about her therapy, detailed questions, like what happened in her first session, her second, stuff like that. What did that have to do with the Program?

After they were done, Denise was drained and Bob looked very thoughtful. He looked at her, then at me, tapped his pen on his pad a few times, and then sat back and sighed.

“Ok, guys, I went a bit far away from Denise’s immediate problem with the Program—I saw you noticed that, Kevin, your body language was shouting ‘get back on track!’ I recently handled a rape case from the civil angle and some of the things I heard from Denise happened in that other case. I’m in no way a medical expert, but I could quickly tell that your therapist, Denise, isn’t doing you a favor. I think it’s the wrong treatment and it’s really important to do this properly. The right treatment I think is pretty difficult to do for the person because it needs careful recall of specific details of your assault, but I’ve seen excellent statistics for recovery. I’m making a guess that your family hasn’t much resources, right? ... ok, yes, and I know a therapist who provides services for really a pittance for situations like yours. I’ll give you her card; tell her I referred you. She specializes in the therapy method I’ll write on the back of the card. You can search the term on the Web and if it looks like you can do it, please call her. I really think you can do it, based on how you responded to my questions earlier.”

He held out the card and she stood and took it. When she sat down she turned it over and looked; I leaned over and read “Prolonged Exposure.” Strange name.

Bob began speaking again. “Now to the immediate issue. The threat to Denise of her impending Program participation for next week. First, we need to work within the Program parameters before we can go outside of them. That’s a basic legal principle; you can’t overthrow an entire contract or a law if you find fault with just a part of it. You work with the statements and interpret them in any way that isn’t self-contradictory or violates any other provisions. If a term is undefined in a contract, then its definition can be taken from any collegiate dictionary. If a list of items is given, the list is either inclusive or exclusive, and that has to be stated or else the list simply shows examples of included items and any other item of a matching class, no matter how remote, is automatically part of the class. I don’t want to do a lecture on legal principles but I want to show you how it works when we look for how to get what we need from the rules themselves.

“Now let’s look at the rules. I have a copy of my son’s booklet, but yours may be different.”

We both pulled out our copies; I gave mine to Bob and shared Denise’s.

“You said you were told that there were no medical exemptions, yet here on page 4 I see that they are permitted. Look under ‘Exemptions.’ It includes the statement, ‘matters of health.’”

Denise said, “Yes, my doctor specified that in my letter. But it says at the beginning, ‘Local Program officials may make exemptions... ‘ First, I was told the exemption is only given by the Program official, not the school, and second, they told me it says ‘may make’ and not ‘shall’ or ‘must’ make. They said that the official has the sole discretion. They also told me that a medical matter isn’t a health matter—I was healthy by definition because I was able to go to school.”

“Really. What kind of Neanderthal reasoning is that? Ok, we can probably challenge that dumb reasoning, but let’s see what other tools we have. Ok, here, under ‘Compulsory Nudity’ on page 2. At the bottom it says, ‘The Program does NOT expect participants to risk their health or safety.’ It goes on to talk about safety equipment, but this statement itself is pretty all-encompassing and could apply to exemptions too. There’s another law principle that says that all headings and titles are descriptive and not proscriptive. That means that the title tells what the next part is about, but does not say that is all it’s about. All provisions in a legal document carry the same weight wherever they are located. Sometimes you may infer that a statement applies only to the section where it appears, but legally that only counts as one’s opinion. The working principle is that a statement means what its words say. Nothing more, nothing less.

“That wording on page 2 says that if something in the Program can be a risk to a participant’s health or safety, the Program expects that the person will not do it—take steps to avoid injury. Ok, definition time. Risk: this is a well defined legal term, so hoary that no one would think to challenge its meaning. It means exactly what you think it does. To endanger. Health: this is a very broad term, so we can look it up.

“Here we are: ‘Health: the state of being free from illness or injury. A person’s mental or physical condition.’ So substituting terms then, that page 2 line says that the Program does not expect that a participant will endanger their mental condition. How do we prevent the endangerment? For a physical danger, like a chemical spill, we wear gloves and aprons. For a mental endangerment, since we can’t see it or feel it, we need a medical opinion. Expert opinions are another basic law principle. If something is too complex for a layperson to understand, the law accepts using the experience and knowledge of someone who understands. A medical expert can interpret and advise on medical matters. Denise, your doctor’s letter specifically states the consequences of your exposure to a Program endangerment?”

“Yes, it says that the effect of my being naked or my privates being touched will cause me to have a mental breakdown—didn’t use that term; it had words like ‘phobia’ and ‘psychosis’ but my doc said it’s what they meant.”

“Well, it’s clear then. We’ve got a good case, from two places in the booklet, for a permanent exemption. One, it seems, is up to our Neanderthal Program official. The other is open-ended as far as who can make the ruling, so we could make the case that the school’s principal can—or best of all—you yourself can, Denise. It doesn’t say you can’t. If you’re selected for the Program, then you’re part of the Program, it’s you, and you can’t expect to put yourself in danger, by definition. A bit disingenuous, but we’re working with the absolute meaning of words. I don’t think they’ll buy it though, they’re too entrenched in their interpretations, but this analysis is good enough to get an injunction, if necessary, and hold things up for as long as we want to do.”

I had been watching Denise’s face during Bob’s explanation and seeing her expressions go from hopefulness, chagrin, despair, uncertainty, wariness, and finally joy was amusing but heartbreaking. But with his final words she broke out into a huge smile.

“Oh my God, Bob, you’re wonderful! You can do that? I don’t know how to thank you!”

“No, don’t thank me, thank Kevin. He was the catalyst. I’m just the mechanic who puts the parts together. But I really hope you’ll consider that therapy; it’s had good results in so many cases that I strongly suggest you try.”

“I’ve been thanking Kevin all day long! I can’t believe I only met him seven hours ago—it feels like seven years!” She leaned over and kissed my cheek.

“Now, Kevin, let’s go to the second reason you’re here, and let’s hope it isn’t as complex.”

“Maybe. It’s my emancipation.”

“Ah. Yes, an interesting and unusual status. I’ll bet you’ve got school officials in a real dither over that. This’ll be fun, really. I love to see officious stuffed shirts squirm when they can’t put everything into simple pigeonholes. What aspect of your legal adult status seems to bother them?”

“Again, it’s the Program. Remember, they just found me in the office and grabbed me into it before I had the slightest idea about it. Here’s the papers they wanted my parent/guardian to sign; when I said I had none and the forms didn’t apply, all hell broke loose; the woman didn’t know what to do and began making random threats.”

“Yes, you’re right; clearly these are meaningless in your case—oh Denise—did your mom sign these?” He showed her the forms.

“No, the doc said she shouldn’t.”

“Oh good. Even better. No parental informed consent. Good. Kevin, back to you. What did she say?”

“First, that participation was a graduation requirement. Second, even as an adult I could be forced to be in the Program—forced was the key. Like that goon attempted. Third, even though I’m an adult, as a high school student I still don’t have an adult’s constitutional rights.”

“Oh good. This is a twist I didn’t think of with my son. He actually was 18 when he got picked. His birthday was the week before. I’m such a dummy—I could have had a blast with this. Oh, well, I get to have another go at it now. After we get finished with them, probably they’ll be so wary of picking seniors that the Program will effectively end in the junior year. Let’s see, now. An adult status, according to the Supreme Court, gives you all of the protections of the law and the Constitution. No law can deny you those protections. Minors have fewer protections; for example, I think in 1985 the Court declared a high school locker search constitutional and not a breach of the Fourth Amendment because the subjects were minors and while in school, they were the wards of the public, the school in that case. Here, the decision was the same, but this time applied to the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth, the parts interpreted as guaranteeing personal privacy. According to the Court, Congress could enact laws that deprived minors of their freedom to be secure in their person or property presumably because they weren’t legally permitted to make decisions on their own; decisions must be made for them by an adult; here again by the school acting in loco parentis.