Wendall Rohr and a legal team have filed suit on behalf of plaintiff Celeste Wood, whose husband died from lung cancer. The trial is to be held in Biloxi, Mississippi, a state thought to have favourable tort laws and sympathetic juries. The defendant is tobacco company Pynex, part of the 'Big Four'. Durwood Cable is lead lawyer for the defense and assigns case management to Rankin Fitch, a ruthless lawyer and jury consultant who has helped to "win" cases like this.
Even before the jury have been sworn, one of them, Nicholas Easter, has begun to quietly conive behind the scenes, in concert with a mysterious woman known only as Marlee.
Fitch has placed a camera in the courtroom, feeding to his office nearby so that the trial can be observed. As the case continues, Fitch is approached by Marlee with a proposal to 'buy' the verdict. In default, she threatenes to 'bump' several jurors. He refuses to pay and several jurors are lost. Easter still quietly works on the jury. As the jury and their attitudes change, the result is no longer predictable.
Easter becomes jury foreman and convinces them to find for the plaintiff and make a large monetary award - two million dollars for compensatory damages, and four hundred million dollars for punitive measures. The defense lawyers and their employers are devastated.
A while after the trial, Marlee contacts Fitch and explains why she engineered the verdict. It emerges that her parents died of smoking-related diseases and she wanted to make sure justice was done. She has also speculated with the bribe money and caused a major fall in tobacco shares. She returns the original money.
Whilst Easter and Marlee are now rich and satisfied that they served justice, Fitch realises that his reputation is gone and that the tobacco companies, once undefeatable, are now vulnerable to lawsuits.
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