Chapter 16
The people standing on the front porch of the house waited until the homeowner opened to their knock, and as soon as the front door was opened, Kevin Lassiter stepped back and welcomed everyone inside.
“Son,” he said with a gigantic grin and hugged Caleb, then Katherine. He shook hands with Jason, and gave a side hug to Ilsa. “Come in, come in,” he said with enthusiasm and moved his arm wide.
“Dad, what the hell happened?” Caleb turned to his father with a frown after looking around briefly to the home he grew up in.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not so crowded in here. I like it.”
“Honestly? I got rid of all your mother’s shit. I was sick and tired of looking at it, and asked my neighbor to help me take it out on the lawn. I put a ‘Free’ sign on it.” He grinned. “For two weeks. No one took anything, so on the third week, I dragged it to the curb for trash.”
Caleb laughed and shook his head, then stopped in his tracks. “Oh, hello,” he said to the woman standing behind the counter, fussing with the coffee cups and food on the trays.
“Paula?” Staci asked from behind him and pushed him out of the side to rush toward the other woman.
They hugged and laughed, and with her arm around the older woman’s waist she turned to Tony, Caleb, Katherine, Jason, and Ilsa.
“This is Paula Carson, she was my lawyer for the first trial.” Staci pointed to the others as she introduced them.
“Caleb Lassiter, you know him, he’s also Kevin’s son.
Next to him is his girlfriend, Katherine Miller.
That’s Ilsa Miller, Katherine’s mother, and beside her is Jason Black, my current lawyer for this new case.
The guy over there is my boyfriend, Tony Jacobs. ”
The first one to step forward was Caleb and he hugged the other woman, and stepped aside for the others to shake her hand.
“Thank you for all your information over the last few months,” Jason said as he accepted a cup of coffee from Kevin.
“You’re welcome. I was happy to help.” She looked around and turned back to Jason. “Are the others joining us?”
“No, Marcia and Lloyd couldn’t come until this weekend, I haven’t heard from Commander Hall yet, he’s on his way, but I don’t know when. Jake Cogburn will be coming with Marcia and Lloyd, they will be staying at a hotel in town.”
“We came a couple of days early to go over our case,” Ilsa said. “Since Kevin offered us a place to stay here, we took him up on his offer.” As she sipped her coffee, she looked between Paula Carson and Kevin Lassiter. “Have there been any new developments in the last couple of weeks?”
“Nothing new,” Kevin said with a grin and he walked over to the dining room table and indicated for them to sit down.
They all settled and Caleb grabbed the platter of sandwiches to set in the middle of the table.
He took one with a grin. “I’m starving.” They all helped themselves and as Kevin explained.
“Through my contacts at the local police department, it took some time, hell, it took all this time, but I was able to uncover something I thought might be of interest to this case.”
“What?” everyone asked and shuddered at his expression.
“It turns out that one of the professors is a fourth cousin to the former Senator Burrows.”
“WHAT!” Everyone shouted at once.
“Which one?” Staci asked.
“Professor Denike.”
“Stupid question,” Tony said as he wiped his mouth. “These last six months we’ve been calling these men ‘the professors’. How many are there, and who are they?”
“Four,” Staci said. “Professor Madden was the one that asked me to join his friends and colleagues. He was my Professor for a class when I was still in my teens. My bio-mechanics professor. The men he introduced me to were Professor Striker, Professor Ralph, and Professor Denike. It was Denike that started making noise that I stole their work when I broke away from them.”
“Why did you break away from them?” Katherine asked.
“They didn’t like that I was the one making progress.
They also didn’t like that I had Paula here draw up a contract before I even entertained the idea of joining them.
It clearly stated that anything I developed during my time with them, was mine, and I could take it with me.
That was the basis of the first case. They tried to say I stole what I had developed.
I clearly had proof it was mine, and mine alone. ”
“What the professors didn’t know,” Paula spoke for the first time since sitting down.
“Staci developed her method while still in school. I believe she was twelve when she helped my brother with his prosthetic. She had all the documentation from back then. Because it was a good idea, and a good way to do her work, she actually applied for a patent for it.”
“I did not know this,” Caleb said.
“Yeah, I’m not being mean, but as smart as Staci is, sometimes she forgets things. I was the one that produced the patent at her last case. As soon as the judge saw that, he ruled in our favor.”
“You didn’t tell us you held a patent,” Jason turned to her with wide eyes and smirked when she only shrugged.
“I forgot, I get lost in the work, and the papers take a back seat in my brain to the actual work of creating a prosthetic.”
“Do you have a copy of it?” Ilsa asked Paula.
“I do,” she opened the file beside her and produced the document.
“It was my brother Johnny that came to me to help Staci. Though there is no age limit on who can hold a patent, she still needed a legal adult to help her fill out the paperwork. Johnny came to me with the application half filled out, together we went to the patent attorney in my office, and once he looked it over, we just went to Staci to get her signature on the application. Once she signed, we sent it off, and she received her patent in the mail. Well, it was pending for a year, but after that year, it became a regular patent.” She turned to Staci with a nod.
“She received it before she had even heard of any of the professors. Like I said, she was only twelve when she applied, and probably thirteen when she received it. The work you did on Johnny is what you do now?”
“Correct, the patent is for the basic model, I’ve perfected it over the years.”
As Paula talked, Jason and Ilsa read the patent and nodded in agreement. They talked as they ate, and as they finished, Tony looked around.
“Question.”
“What’s that?”
“Who goes first? Them or us? I’m only asking because if they’re going to inundate you with their paperwork, we’ll be in court for days, or weeks.”
Jason grinned, and Tony shivered at his look.
“They go first, and they have to bring up new evidence, if they start with Burrows Sr. I won’t give their lawyer the satisfaction of calling him senator or former senator, that title was stripped from him.
I have proof. Anyway, if they bring up Burrows, Sr. as their source of the new information, I will object and state why I object.
It will be confusing, but who you see sitting here before you, you won’t see in the courtroom. I’m ruthless.”
“Okay,” Tony said with a nod. “I’ll take your word for it.”
As Caleb and Katherine cleaned up from their lunch, the others continued discussing the case, and by the time they headed out to the courthouse four days later, they were ready.
Both Ilsa and Paula had to take Staci shopping so she could be presentable in court.
Not that she wasn’t presentable, but jeans and tee shirts, or sweats wasn’t proper court attire.
In the lobby of the court house, the group stopped when someone called their names and they went over to greet Marcia, Lloyd, Jake, Hank Patterson, and another man. Everyone waited until Tony greeted this guy with a handshake and a hug, then he grinned as he turned to Jason and Ilsa.
“This is Commander Shay Hall.”
“Good to meet you,” Jason said, and shook his hand enthusiastically. “So glad you could make it.”
“Hey, once I heard it was to help Jacobs here, or his girlfriend, and that Burrows was involved, I jumped on the opportunity to be here.”
“Thank you,” Jason nodded and they headed toward the security guards and had to go through the metal detector.
It took them twenty minutes to make it through.
As predicted, Tony’s inside hardware held them up, but thankfully he had a card from his medical doctor that stated he was full of pins and plates.
It was proven when the security guards ran a wand over the parts of his body the medical card stated.
When they made it through, Paula led the way to the courtroom they had been assigned for the case.
They walked in, looked around, and Jason set up his papers.
He was first chair, Paula was second, because she could practice in the state of Washington.
Jason had the federal credentials to practice law in any state in America.
He made sure he had his license papers ready.
Staci sat between him and Paula, with Ilsa at the end of the table, acting as third chair. Directly behind them in the rows of the court room sat Tony, Marcia, Lloyd, and Commander Hall. Jake sat behind them, and they looked up when someone else joined him in the row.
Paula grinned, bumped shoulders with Staci, and pointed over her shoulder.
Because the professors and their lawyers hadn’t arrived yet, Staci turned around, jumped to her feet and hurried behind her.
She grabbed the man standing there and hugged him tightly.
With her hand on Tony’s shoulder, she introduced them.
“Tony, this is Johnny. Johnny, this is Tony, my boyfriend. Johnny was the first guy I helped with a prosthetic, and he’s Paula’s brother.”
Tony stood, they shook hands, then quickly sat back down when the door opened and several men dressed in expensive suits entered.
Three of them carried just as expensive briefcases, and the other four dressed the same.
It took a few minutes for them to get settled.
Just then, the doors opened and six people walked in, dressed in less expensive suits, but they all pulled at least three rolling carts full of files behind them.
“Oh, hell no,” Jason whispered beneath his breath and looked at Staci as she settled back in her seat. She shrugged and he asked what that was for.
“That’s what they did the last time. Overwhelmed us with paperwork.”
“I’ll shut that shit down in a heartbeat,” Jason said.
One of the other lawyers leaned over to the others and whispered.
Suddenly everyone turned over to look at Jason wearing scowls.
He ignored them. They were saved from more awkward stares when the bailiff called them to stand.
The judge entered, told them to sit down, and he read the case before his bench.
When he finished, he nodded to the plaintiff table.
“You have the floor.”
“Your Honor, we’d like to ask for the credentials of the man sitting at the defendant’s table. We know Ms. Carson, and Ms. Hardt, but we don’t know the other two. We would like to know if they are qualified to be here.”
“Fair statement,” the judge said as he looked over at Jason. “I too would like to know who is in my courtroom. Do you have proof that you can practice law in the state of Washington?”
Jason stood, reached for the readied papers, and handed them to the bailiff when he came to collect them. He kept his smirk to himself as the judge read them, and stared at Jason with his eyes the size of dinner plates.
“Holy moly,” he said, then shook his head as he handed the papers back.
When the bailiff returned them, the judge looked at the lawyers for the plaintiffs.
“Gentlemen, meet Jason Black, Federal Prosecutor with permission from the President of the United States to practice law wherever he is needed. However, he also has a license for the state of Washington, California, Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, Colorado, and he has worked for DOD for the last twenty-plus years.”
“What’s that?” one of the professors called out, and Jason exchanged grins with Staci.
“Department of Defense,” the judge answered shortly. “Call your first witness.”
“Sir, our first witness is actually on a Zoom call. He couldn’t make it in person, but we set it up for him to attend via Zoom.”
“Mr. Black, do you have a problem with it?”
“No, your honor,” Jason stood as he answered. He looked at the others at the table and grinned with his back to the judge.