DAY 2: The Lottery Ticket

It should have been softball.  The firm was repping a damages suit against Big Pharma's number 2, and all we were missing was the estate being represented.  As it turned out, the estate of our dearly departed client had a biological survivor, who didn't live very far from the middle school he and I used to attend together.  All I had to do was appeal to his nostalgia, get him to sign the papers, and approve a 30-percent minimum commission.  Softball.
Donny Venetti and I didn't run in the same circles in middle school.  But I had him at the words, "Fighting Pelicans".  I lost him at the words "DNA test."
"Cherise sent you, didn't she?  She ain't got nothing of mine, so she better get herself a J-O-B!" He punctuated his statement with a flying beer can.
"I don't know a Cherise!  I told you, I'm representing the old man!"
Donny paced his front porch, looking for his next projectile.  "He didn't have nothing when he died last year, and it's worth even less now!"
I clambered up the porch, eliminating his high ground advantage.  "You already got the inheritence, Donny, but you need our help to cash it.  You ever heard of Metracet?"
"They're on Waltrip's car."
"Yeah, they pay a lot of money for that, to get people to take that pill.  You've never taken it, have you?  No, because you've never had the flu.  You've driven school buses for 15 years, including 12 of the fiercest flu seasons on record, and you've never taken a sick day.   You ever had a flu shot?"
"No-"
"-nope, you don't believe in them, just like your dad!"  I kept talking, leading Donny with my words to a sitdown on his porch.  "His nursing home fought him about it for years, even with his physician's special dispensation.  And in all that time, he never got sick!  Everybody else was dying on pneumonia or heart disease - it took two flights of stairs to kill him!-  I'm sorry, Donny; that was crass."
"eh, he was a sumbitch..."
"Agreed.  He had blood tests done before he died, to make sure they weren't injecting him in his sleep.  His third test went down to the DNA, and that's when we found something interesting:  it appears your father was genetically inclined to be impervious to the common cold, among other things.  Our geneticist found it rather quickly, because the sequence that made your dad so durable is an exact match for the recipe of three of America's five best-selling cold medicines.
"Now, I don't think you took the heavy science courses when we were in school, but I think you can understand this.  The drug makers made their recipe in the lab first, so they get the patent, they get to be the only one supplying this very successful drug for the next 20 years, and name their price.  But the Supreme Court's ruling on 'AMP v. Myriad Genetics' states that you can only patent a DNA recipe if you invented the recipe; if it occurs in nature, it's invalid.   Which led to the beginning of some very lucrative conversations with a certain drug manufacturer..."
Donny caught on to enough of my explanation.  "Well, where's the money?"
"Your dad passed away and got himself embalmed before we could finish the conversations.  And they're calling into question the evidence we've collected so far, but if we were able to produce a living descendent with that DNA recipe..." I poked his shoulder twice, to give him a visual aid, "well, that'd be a slam dunk."
"Well, what do you want from me?"
"We're already doing it.  Just sign some papers, and take a DNA test."
He looked at his shoes for a moment, saying nothing.  Then he looked me, so I could see his confusion was gone.  "I don't know you.  Get off my porch," he said, or something not as nice.  And then, he went in his house and locked the door.  I wouldn't see him again.

Two weeks later, Donny died in an MVA, his bus stalled on a railroad line; fortunately, he was off-duty, and the only casualty.  I attended his funeral; it was surprisingly well-attended.  I met Cherise and her family there; also, nicer than I expected.

Despite Donny's uncooperativeness, I found the evidence I needed.  My firm was able to arrange an out-of-court settlement with that certain Nascar-loving pharmaceutical, to the tune of make-me-a-partner-already.  I gave Cherise's family the news at her graduation party.  She's still undecided about what college path to choose; then again, being a new mom straight out of high school doesn't usually pay so well...

Inspired by the Discover Magazine article, "Supreme Court strikes down Gene Patents"