The Appeal

by John Grisham

Mississippi attorneys Wes and Mary Grace Payton have battled New York City-based Krane Chemical in an effort to seek justice for Jeannette Baker, whose husband and son died from carcinogenic pollutants the company knowingly and negligently allowed to seep into their town's water supply. When the jury awards Baker $3 million in wrongful death damages and $38 million in punitive damages, billionaire stockholder Carl Trudeau vows to do whatever is necessary to overturn their decision and save the company's stocks.

Since Mississippi Supreme Court justices are elected rather than appointed, Trudeau plots with Barry Rinehart of Troy-Hogan, a shady Boca Raton firm that deals only in judicial elections, to select a candidate who can defeat the liberal Sheila McCarthy. Their choice is Ron Fisk, a lawyer with no political experience or ambitions. He is naive enough to be impressed by the attention shown him by his backers, and doesn't question his source of funding or his campaign team's underhanded tactics. Rinehart also uses Clete Coley, a clownish third party candidate, draw support away from McCarthy and then cede it to Fisk when he eventually withdraws from the race.

Fisk defeats McCarthy and immediately votes against upholding several large settlements in cases brought before the court on appeal, and the Paytons expect he will do the same when their case comes up for review. What they don't anticipate is Fisk unexpectedly being forced to rethink his stance when his son is seriously injured by a defective product and left permanently impaired by a medical error. The issue of corporate responsibility affects him and his family on a personal level. However, even though Fisk feels that he has been used and tricked, he makes no move to do what is right, and has come to relish his new-found wealth and power. He sides with the big corporation and does not take any action for what happened to his son because he would "look silly."