The CEOS of the “Big Four” tobacco companies drink cocktails on the balcony of a mansion on the Gulf Coast, all nervous and disgruntled that they have another lawsuit to face. The Big Four have spent millions fighting tort laws in Washington, but still they face litigation from the survivors of people who died from complications related to smoking. The Big Four have a collective pool of money called “The Fund” that leaves no trail as it’s used for hardball tactics, expensive lawyers and jury consultants, and more. Rankin Fitch manages The Fund, which has had 16 straight victories on behalf of the Big Four.

The current lawsuit is against Pynex, formerly known as Union Tobacco, run by Dr. Martin Jankle. Jankle is nervous about the lawsuit in Biloxi, as eight of the largest tort law firms in the US allegedly have put up $1 million each to finance the conflict with the tobacco industry. The firms picked the widow of Jacob Wood, a man who died in his early fifties after smoking three packs of cigarettes per day for 30 years. The firms picked Biloxi as the location, as Biloxi juries tend to be generous. They also got assigned a judge who used to be a plaintiff’s lawyer. Fitch assures Jankle that everything is under control.

Lawyer Wendall Rohr made his first fortune representing offshore oil workers who were burned on a Shell rig in the gulf and his second fortune representing asbestos survivors. As a successful plaintiff’s lawyer, he now sets his sights on the tobacco industry, representing Celeste Wood in her case against Pynex for the smoking-induced death of her husband, Jacob. The Wood case is the 55th case against a tobacco company, and none of the first 54 were successful. The Wood case has more funding and poses more of a threat. Rohr and his lawyers complete the same process of jury investigation as their opponents, preparing for the case ahead.

The lawyers and potential jurors arrive at the Biloxi courthouse. Circuit Clerk Gloria Lane helps organize the nearly 200 prospective jurors. Two jurors are missing, both elderly and presumed dead. The jurors fill out their paperwork before entering the courtroom. They sit in rows as the various lawyers and jury consultants appraise them. At 10:30 am, Judge Fred Harkin arrives and begins the proceedings. There are more lawyers than can fit around the tables assigned to each side, so extras sit with the jury consultants in the farther back rows.

As jury selection begins, Harkin offers optional dismissal to the six people over the age of 65 who were mistakenly called; five leave. Harkin asks if anyone is legally blind. A man is, though he is agitated about being excluded for being blind and threatens to sue. Harkin doesn’t eliminate him but plans to find a way to exclude him later. Harkin then questions the potential jurors about any medical issues that would hinder them from serving. By lunch, 13 people are dismissed for medical reasons.

Nicholas has lunch in Burger King and is approached again by the blonde woman who was smoking in Computer Hut. She asks him why he hasn’t called her and whether it’s because she smokes. He says that he doesn’t like smoking but that he still might call her. She asks about his schooling, and he says that he’s in between schools right now after leaving North Texas State, but he might start at Southern Mississippi. She leaves, and he finishes his lunch.

By the end of the day, Harkin dismisses the rest of the medically unfit people and 11 people with other hardships that would prevent them from serving. Fitch isn’t in the court when it adjourns. He is at his office, where he finds no record of a Nicholas Easter from North Texas State. He sends the blonde woman back to Washington but keeps her Biloxi answering machine up in case Nicholas calls her.

The next juror questionnaire contains many questions about smoking, the juror and their family’s smoking and medical histories, and the juror’s opinions on tax dollars going toward healthcare for smokers, among other things. Nicholas fills out the questionnaire with methodical handwriting, hoping that the jury consultants will find his handwriting desirable. Nicholas is familiar with the questions, as they are mostly the same as the questions from the Cimmino case the previous year in Allentown, Pennsylvania, when Nicholas had been pretending to be David Lancaster, a part-time film student working in a video store. Nicholas/David almost made it onto the jury. Now, in Biloxi, he knows that Fitch is having people watch him, so he works tirelessly to seem normal and present his temporary apartment as the living space of a broke student. He knows that the blonde woman is working for Fitch, so he has limited his interactions with her and will not call her.

At the courthouse, Harkin dismisses more people for non-medical hardships. He then turns the floor over to the lawyers from each side to question the potential jurors while the jury consultants review the questionnaires. Lawyer Durr Cable, head of the defense, questions some jurors, including a woman who believes that cigarettes should be outlawed. After the voir dire questioning, the lawyers meet with Harkin in his chambers to begin the selection process. Each side gets 10 strikes on potential jurors. By the end of the day, they’ve selected their jury and their alternate jurors. Nicholas is on the jury.

Nicholas arrives early at the courthouse and sneaks in the back to poke around the courtroom, which he also did earlier before the jury selection was finalized. He goes to the jury room and checks in with the clerk Lou Dell, who is in charge of the jury. He reads the jury instructions, most of which are standard with the exception of the final two, which state that jurors should tell the judge if anyone on either side reaches out to them or if they see or hear anything suspicious in the court. A similar case in Texas was thrown out because people began offering money to the jurors’ families, though neither side could be proven to be at fault. Nicholas thinks that it was Fitch’s work, however. Herman Grimes, the blind man, arrives with his wife. Nicholas claims to have a blind uncle and offers to help Herman, reading the jury instructions to him.

Both sides are relatively pleased with the jury, and the defense is especially happy about Herman’s inclusion, as he expressed a litigious attitude about his potential exclusion because of his blindness. When the court opens and the jury enters, Harkin asks for the foreman. Herman has been selected. Nicholas watches Fitch watch him, aware that, by now, Fitch has figured out that he never attended North Texas State. He’s seen Fitch before, back in Allentown and outside the Broken Arrow Courthouse during the Glavine case. He knows that Fitch is worried about him.

Both sides give their opening statements. Rohr speaks for nearly an hour, promising the jury that he will prove that cigarettes cause lung cancer, which killed Jacob Wood. Cable then speaks for only 30 minutes, asking the jury to keep an open mind and promising to prove that cigarettes do not cause lung cancer.

The first crisis of the trial occurs at lunch, which was set to start at 12:10 pm. When the jurors’ lunch from O’Reilly’s Deli is delayed, Herman has no information as to when the food will arrive. At 12:30 pm, Nicholas begins to sow discord. He tells Lou Dell that lunch needs to be on time or else he’ll talk to Harkin about it. Nicholas tells the group that other juries are allowed to go out and get their own lunches. He claims to know this because he attended two years of law school and therefore has a background in law. The jury begins to trust Nicholas more.

When the food still hasn’t arrived, Nicholas slips out of the courthouse under the guise of going to the bathroom. He finds the restaurant in which Harkin is eating lunch and approaches him to inform him that the jury still hasn’t been fed. Harkin is upset and follows Nicholas back to the courthouse. There is still no food for the jurors, so Harkin brings the jury to dine with him at the restaurant. The jurors are thrilled, and Nicholas is the man of the hour. When Harkin calls O’Reilly’s, the owner claims that a young woman called to explicitly state that the jury’s lunch should not be delivered until 1:30 pm.

The trial’s first witness is the deceased Jacob Wood via a video that he recorded before his death. While in a hospital bed looking 20 years older than he is, dying of emphysema, Jacob tells the story of his life. After over an hour of the video, the jury and Harkin become bored and fatigued, so Harkin calls for a brief recess. Four of the jurors take a smoke break, and one of them, a man named Jerry, attempts to strike up conversation with the three women smoking alongside him, though they refuse to discuss the case with him.

A beautiful brunette woman who goes by the alias Marlee knows everything about the trial and Rankin Fitch. She attends the trial, and before Fitch’s departure, she gives an envelope to a deputy to give to Fitch before leaving. Fitch opens the envelope and finds a letter stating what outfit Nicholas will be wearing the next day. Fitch is careful with his identity, keeping his name a secret, so he’s nervous that the envelope was addressed to him and wonders about the woman’s connection to Nicholas. He leaves court and sends one of his operatives, a man called Doyle, to break into Nicholas’s apartment and investigate him further, but the operative finds no trace of a woman’s presence.

Jacob’s posthumous testimony lasts over two hours in total. Nicholas returns home after court adjourns. He watches on his security cameras as Fitch’s operative breaks into his apartment. He’s not surprised, as he expected this outcome.

Fitch and his operatives watch Nicholas arrive at court from a nondescript plumbing van. Fitch wants to find the woman who gave him the envelope and question her, but his operatives counsel him to wait for her to come to him herself. Nicholas is wearing the outfit described in the letter.

Nicholas arrives early and sits beside a woman named Rikki. Nicholas and Rikki discuss Judge Harkin’s repeated questions to the jurors about whether they have been contacted by any outsiders about the trial. Nicholas hints at the prevalence of jury tampering and bribery in trials of this kind, but he doesn’t tell Rikki all he knows yet. The first witness whom Rohr calls to the stand is Dr. Milton Fricke, an extensively credential medical doctor studying the impact of cigarette smoke on lung health. Fricke is the witness for the entire day of the trial. At lunch, the owner of O’Reilly’s deli personally brings the food on time, but Nicholas is upset that there is only paper plates and plastic cutlery. He insists that he asked for actual china for their food, but the other jurors would rather just eat; O’Reilly promises to bring china the next day.

At the same time, Luther Vandemeer, CEO of Trellco, and his protégé Larry Zell, CEO of Listing Foods, work on a deal to acquire Hadley Brothers, a regional grocery chain that has a store in Biloxi in which Lonnie Shaver, one of the jurors on the Pynex trial, works. Trellco is one of the Big Four, but Listing Foods is not, so Listing Foods’ acquisition of Hadley Brothers would not ring any alarm bells, allowing Zell to put pressure on Lonnie on Vandemeer’s behalf.

Meanwhile, in the small back room of Fitch’s office, Fitch watches the footage from a camera hidden in a briefcase carried by an outsider Washington lawyer named Oliver McAdoo, who works alongside lead defense attorney Durr Cable and his team. Cable doesn’t know about the smuggled camera, which Fitch uses to secretly record the jury and obtain information about their opinions on the case.

After lunch at the Biloxi courthouse, Fricke continues to describe the negative impacts of smoking and shows photos of the autopsy he performed on Jacob, including an image of Jacob’s blackened lungs.

Fitch keeps watching Nicholas over the weekend. Nicholas keeps a normal schedule, working at Computer Hut on Saturday before going fishing with Jerry. Fitch finds no sign of the woman, so he keeps waiting for her. On Monday morning, one of Fitch’s associates tells him that a woman has called for him. Recording and tracing the call, Fitch answers. The woman introduces herself as Marlee and tells Fitch that juror Jerry will walk into the courthouse in 20 minutes with the October 12 issue of Sports Illustrated. She hangs up, but Fitch traces the call to a payphone at a convenience store. Fitch decides to go to court.

In the courthouse, speaking to the other jurors, Nicholas again brings up past jury tampering in other big tobacco litigation cases. He explains that both sides have jury consultants watching their every move, even inside the courthouse. He identifies one woman as one of the defense’s jury consultants and convinces the 11 other jurors to stare at her intensely to intimidate her. When the jurors sit and Harkin gives them the usual speech about avoiding jury tampering, all the jurors stare at Ginger, the jury consultant Nicholas pointed out. Nicholas is thrilled that Fitch sat a few rows behind Ginger but in the same line of sight, making it unclear whether the jury is staring at Ginger or Fitch. Fitch sees that Jerry has the Sports Illustrated that Marlee stated he would have.

Ginger goes to the bathroom when Fricke takes the stand again. Cable questions Fricke about Jacob’s lungs, asking how much of the damage was from cigarette smoke. Fricke states that most of it was caused by cigarettes, but he admits that he cannot know for certain how much. Rohr calls his next witness, Dr. Robert Bronsky, who is another researcher with nearly as many accomplishments as Fricke. Bronsky spends his time on the stand describing the various detrimental compounds and carcinogens present in cigarette smoke. Smokers on the jury, including Jerry, begin to feel sick, but they still have a smoke break before lunch. Lunch goes without a hitch, as O’Reilly has the table set with real plates, glasses, and cutlery.

Fitch leaves and returns to his office, where he receives another call from Marlee. Marlee tells him that she’ll give him more information if he stops tracking her calls, but she doesn’t specify when she’ll call next.

After lunch, Bronsky describes how addictive nicotine is before illustrating the various negative impacts of nicotine on the human body. Bronsky states that tobacco companies artificially increase the nicotine content of their cigarettes to make them more addictive.

Nicholas arrives early to the jury room as clerk Lou Dell finishes brewing the decaf coffee. He tries to thank her, but she’s still frosty with him after his myriad complaints about lunch. Retired Colonel Frank Herrera arrives early, as Nicholas expected. Nicholas and Frank discuss the case, and Frank exhibits a strong anti-smoking attitude, as he used to smoke while in the Army but quit because he realized how bad smoking is for people’s health. Nicholas states that Frank should have disclosed his anti-smoking attitude on the questionnaire, and Frank gets cagey before he realizes that Nicholas cannot tell the judge that they were discussing the case, which is forbidden.

Fitch is upset that McAdoo’s concealed camera briefcase was kicked and is angled away from the jury. He sends a messenger to tell McAdoo to fix it, but the camera is still pointed away from part of the jury. Bronsky continues with his scientific explanations of how cigarette smoke’s irritants slowly destroy the body. After two hours, the jury is exhausted and seems bored, so Harkin calls for a two-hour lunch. The jury is allowed an outside walk after Nicholas writes a letter to Harkin requesting fresh air. Fitch sends a photographer to take pictures as the jury walks, with the four smokers at the rear with their cigarettes.

Bronsky continues to talk throughout the afternoon, though his language becomes less intelligible and more boring to the jurors. Harkin adjourns court early. Lonnie Shaver hurries back to his office above the grocery store he manages. The store owner’s son, Troy, is there with two other men. Troy explains that his family is selling the store to a larger company, represented by the two other men. The other men tell Lonnie that his job is safe; in fact, they want to promote him up in management since they have no current African American managers. They want to fly Lonnie up to Charlotte, North Carolina, to meet with more people from their company, but Lonnie reminds them that he’s currently serving on a jury. They offer to fly him and his wife up to Charlotte on a weekend, and Lonnie agrees.

The trial hits a snag when the defense files a motion to prevent the testimony of Dr. Hilo Kilvan, a supposed expert in the statistics of lung cancer. Rohr and Cable argue back and forth about the delays caused by this motion and past motions. Meanwhile, the jurors are kept in the jury room, where they have begun to form cliques. Nicholas talks with Herman about petitioning Harkin for more outside walks for the jurors during trial delays.

Once allowed in the courtroom, Nicholas sees the man whom Fitch sent to break into his apartment sitting among the spectators. The man, Doyle, is there to look for Marlee, though he does not find her. Nicholas needs Harkin to see the man so that Harkin will recognize him when Nicholas shows him the video of the break-in.

Bronsky is on the stand again for cross-examination by Cable. Cable repeatedly asks him what each compound he’s identified in tobacco smoke does to the body individually. Bronsky states that it’s impossible to isolate the effects of singular compounds, but Cable hammers the point to create doubt about the impacts of cigarette smoke. As Cable and Bronsky continue, Nicholas writes a note to Harkin describing Doyle and claiming that he’s seen Doyle following him. He passes the note to fellow juror Loreen, who passes it to a deputy, who passes it to Harkin. Fitch and Doyle don’t see the note coming from Nicholas, but from Loreen.

Harkin feels exhilarated that some of the jury tampering he’s constantly harping about is happening in his courtroom. He weighs his options and decides to write a note to Circuit Clerk Gloria Lane to summon the Sheriff. However, before the Sheriff comes, Doyle slips out of the courtroom, to Harkin’s frustration.

During recess, Harkin summons Nicholas to his chambers. He asks Nicholas about Doyle, and Nicholas claims to have seen Doyle following him around town at various points. Harkin asks him if other jurors have had similar experiences, and Nicholas says that he hasn’t heard of any. Harkin tells Nicholas to send him a note via Lou Dell if he sees the man again or hears of any other suspicious occurrences. He also asks Nicholas if he’s read The Wall Street Journal, which published a story about the trial. Nicholas says no but notes that Frank reads it every day. He also tells Harkin that Frank has already made up his mind, as he is unsympathetic to smokers. Harkin is frustrated but more concerned with the possibility of outside influences, so he tells Nicholas to alert him if he or anyone else is followed again.

The author of The Wall Street Journal story offered a fair summary of the trial with no opinion about which way the jury will go, as it is unclear so far.