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setting the offender straight and would throw in a few choice cracks about his or her looks, breath, or fashion choices.
    Naya placed the receiver back in the cradle and returned to her seat.
    “So?” Peterson asked.
    “Well, Mickey did file this morning, but get this: Calvaruso’s not the named rep.”
    “What?” Peterson and Sasha said together.
    “I know, weird, right? The deputy clerk said the putative class representatives are listed as Martin and Tonya Grant.”
    “Grant?” Sasha retrieved the article from in front of Peterson and started flipping through it. “Here we go. Celeste Grant, getting her masters in social work at the University of Maryland, is survived by her parents, Tonya and Martin Grant of Regent Square. She was on her way to a training session for some humanitarian group she had signed on to work with in South America next summer.”
    Peterson groaned. Sasha knew what he was thinking: the parents of a graduate student devoted to helping people made for pretty sympathetic plaintiffs. True, but she would have gone with Rosa Calvaruso. A widow, particularly one who wasn’t well off,—which this one almost assuredly was not, given her address and her late husband’s job—would resonate more with a Pittsburgh jury. Not that this case would ever see a jury. Hemisphere Air would settle if Prescott couldn’t get the case dismissed or the class claims kicked on legal grounds. But still, Sasha wondered, what was Mickey Collins thinking?
    “What was he thinking?” she said aloud.
    Peterson raised his shoulders in a dismissive shrug. “Perhaps the widow told him she wasn’t interested.”
    Several pairs of eyebrows shot up around the room. Even these inexperienced attorneys found the idea that a would-be plaintiff would turn down a potential jackpot a bit hard to swallow.
    “Maybe she was in shock,” Kaitlyn offered.
    “Maybe.” Sasha turned back to Naya. “Who caught the case?”
    Naya grinned. “Judge Dolans.”
    The Honorable Amanda Dolans, the last of the Clinton appointees still sitting on the Western District bench, was notoriously pro-plaintiff.
    Joe Donaldson cleared his throat. “Uh, Sasha, I e-mailed my memo to you just before the meeting, so you probably didn’t get a chance to see it yet.” He spoke with effort, like the words were lodged in his throat, fighting not to come out.
    “No, Joe, I didn’t.”
    His eyes, already bleary from the late night spent researching and drafting the memo, clouded over as he broke the news. “Um, well, of the three sitting judges who have MDL experience and who don’t currently have an active MDL case on their dockets, Judge Dolans is the worst for us.”
    Sasha smiled. “Of the other two, who would have been the best?”
     “Either one would have been much better. Mattheis is a pro-business Bush appointee. Westman is an Obama appointee, but his decisions have been very well-reasoned. They both have good track records with MDLs. Mattheis just settled an enormous antitrust MDL, so he probably won’t be assigned another one for a while. But, man, it’s bad luck we got Dolans and not Westman. Based on the opinions I looked at last night, she finds a way to rule for the plaintiff every time.”
    He finished and dropped his gaze to his half-eaten doughnut, ashamed, as though he were somehow responsible for the case being assigned to an unfavorable judge.
    “Rewrite the memo to focus on Westman, summarize his significant opinions, and attach copies of them.”
    Joe looked up.
    “Mandy Dolans is Mickey Collins’ ex-wife. She’ll recuse herself as soon as the complaint gets to her chambers. She always does when one of his cases is assigned to her. From what I hear, the divorce was ugly.”
    Joe smiled, equal parts relieved Dolans wouldn’t be hearing the case and chagrined he didn’t think to research the judges’ personal lives.
    “It’s difficult being married to a lawyer,” Peterson announced to no one in particular.
    Naya shot