He looked startled. “Hey, now there’s a concept. I could use a new trophy wife. I wore out the last one.”
She began backing down the folding steps to the ground. “Okay, now I’m frightened. I’ll take a rain check, if you don’t mind. Besides, I’m going to be amazingly busy working on this thing.”
“Gracie, you do know I’m only kidding, right?”
She looked hurt. “You don’t want to date me?”
He waved and smiled. “In a few years, perhaps. When I grow up. Good luck with that judge.”
She hurried back to her Corvette in the parking lot and moved into traffic, heading for the office.
The lure of diverting to a nearby Starbucks after parking her car was strong, but her office had a coffeepot and she had several hours of drafting and proofing to do before the amended complaint and the accompanying papers would be fit to present to a federal district judge on the doorstep of his home. She swung through the door of her office feeling strangely out of place, as if Ben Janssen might be waiting for her in abject disapproval.
There were several others at work in the sprawling offices, but she slipped inside unnoticed and closed the door. She pulled her laptop out of her briefcase and secured it in the docking cradle on her desk just as the urge to talk to April became overwhelming.
Sitting on the forty-sixth floor had an added advantage of a direct shot to the nearest cellular phone tower, so the signal was clear and steady as she punched in April’s cell number, relieved when April answered on the third ring. The background sounds had diminished.
“Where are you, April?”
“About three hours out of Valdez.”
Gracie reported Arlie’s directive to withdraw on Monday whatever she’d filed.
“I don’t want to do it, April, but ethically I don’t have a choice if he won’t relent.”
“I’ll talk to him. I tried after you called.”
Gracie relayed the details of the call from Ben Cole. “I think you need to rendezvous with him as quickly as possible, before your dad orders you home, too.”
“Ben who?”
“Cole. Ph.D. I think he’s taking a big risk with his job, or something, so we’ll need to arrange a very discreet meeting.”
“Okay, go ahead. I’ll be here until we reach Valdez, then I’ll try to get a commercial flight or charter someone to get back to Anchorage.” There was a pause on the Alaskan end and some words exchanged in the background.
“Sorry, Gracie. Just talking to Jim. What’s the next step?”
“I’m going to sit here in my office and hammer out a new complaint, April. What I filed yesterday was a temporary restraining order to prevent the Coast Guard from destroying the tapes they took from you. Now we have missing wreckage. This may touch the laws of admiralty, so I’ve got some research to do very quickly, but what I need to accomplish is to have the judge order the government to disclose where the wreckage is, protect it, freeze it in one place, and give us the chance to inspect it.”
“So… we’re not suing them?”
“Well, it’s a bit tricky. The FAA is the government, and essentially they’re withholding evidence if any part of the government has something material. In this case they’ve gone out and snatched the prime evidence in open waters. I’m still working through the right theory, but they can’t charge the captain with violative conduct and then affirmatively go obtain and hide evidence to the contrary.”
“Can’t we sue them for damages, too? I mean, as long as Dad will relent. After all, I’ve already spent several thousand dollars for the privilege of being accosted, looted, deceived, and frustrated by my own government.”
Gracie was drumming her fingers on the desk in thought. “That’s perfect, April!”
“What?”
“Obstruction of justice. That’s essentially what they’ve been doing. First, there’s a process in place in administrative law for violations against pilots, and the process enables the licensed airman to defend himself or herself and present evidence. But if the same government — read: ours — tries to get in the way and obstruct that process, it’s arguable that they’re committing a criminal act, and at the very least they’re creating irreparable harm if the evidence is tampered with. And, civilly, let me see. I’ll bet I can hang my hat on admiralty law, in that what they’ve done, regardless of which government agency did it, constitutes tortious interference with property rights.”
“Admiralty law?”
“Yes. It governs things like this involving navigable international waters, and it’s a separate and distinct form of what we call legal jurisdiction. There’s common law, there’s equity law, which is what I used to get that restraining order, and then there’s admiralty, which goes way back to Great Britain.”
“What’s equity law?”
“In old England, as the common law developed, the regular courts could award money and property to injured or damaged people who sued other people and won. But the normal courts were powerless to act until an injury, or damage, had occurred. So another kind of jurisdiction developed we now call equity jurisdiction, handled by special courts that could order people to do something or not do something in order to prevent harm. In other words, if Lord Brighton threatened to come on Lord Smythe’s land and cut down a favorite tree, Smythe could either wait for the damage to be done and then sue Brighton, or he could go to an equity court and get the court to order Brighton not to cut down the tree in the first place.”
“Okay.”
“Today, in our country as well as the UK, almost all courts have equity jurisdiction along with their normal duties. So judges can preside over damage trials as well as issue court orders, known as temporary restraining orders and injunctions.”
“My head’s spinning, Gracie.”
“Yeah, well, here’s what I think we’ll do. You went out there with Jim Dobler to begin the process of salvaging the wreck of your dad’s airplane as his appointed agent. There can be no question about abandoning the wreck, in other words. You never abandoned it.”
“Of course not.”
“But, you see, that’s a big, big deal, April. If you don’t abandon the wreck, no one can take the title away. A salvage operator can bring it up if you don’t specifically tell him not to and at worst you might have to pay the fair value of those services, but no one can take the title to it. Not even our government, without due process of law.”
“Which means?”
“The FAA or Navy or whoever would have to… I know this sounds silly, but… file suit against the Albatross.”
“What?”
“I told you it sounded silly. It’s called ‘in rem’ jurisdiction, where the title to property is being determined. I remember a case in law school that absolutely cracked me up. It was before the Supreme Court of the United States, and it was entitled: The United States of America versus One 1973 Rolls Royce.”
“Who won?”
“Not the Rolls.”
“So, unless we see the United States of America versus November Three Four Delta Delta…”
“That’s it… they can’t seize it, they can’t hide it, and they can’t interfere or claim you’ve abandoned it.”
“Good. Don’t listen to Dad. I don’t know what’s spooking him, but we carry on. Okay?”
“As long as I can do so ethically.”
“We’ll work it out. Don’t withdraw anything.”
“Call me when you get to Valdez, April. I’ve got to get this researched and written and find the judge before he goes fishing or something.”
“You’re hopeful, then, Gracie?”
“Heck, yes! They may just have saved your dad ten to twenty thousand dollars in salvage fees by illicitly interfering, as well as giving us the evidence we need to clear him.”