Over the Precipice

• Author: Ronald K. Fierstein
• Profession: Lawyer on the team of litigators from the prestigious patent law firm of Fish & Neave
• Pages: 333-345

333

CHAPT ER 19

OVER THE PRECIPICE

With summer approaching and the discovery phase of the lawsuit finally

coming to an end after five contentious and exhausting years, both sides

began in earnest their preparations for trial. For the lawyers expected

to live in Boston while trying the case, Fish & Neave reserved thirteen

rooms from mid-September to mid-January at the comfortable Ritz Carl-

ton hotel. From the Ritz, it was a pleasant half-mile walk to the court-

house along the Boston Common. An extensive amount of space was also

reserved at the Park Plaza Hotel, diagonally down and across the street

from the Ritz, for the support staff Fish & Neave would be bringing up

from New York for the duration. More than twenty rooms were reserved

for paralegals, who would handle the documents and trial exhibits, and

for secretaries, who would process all the words generated by the lawyers

in this era before the personal computer. In addition, a huge suite was

reserved to house the more than 100 file cabinets it was anticipated Pola-

roid would need to store all the paper generated by the litigation.

As plans were being finalized, the Park Plaza’s engineers advised Fish

& Neave that the weight of all this material would be too heavy for the floor

to bear, so a plan was devised to split the filing cabinets between two floors

in the hotel. Office furniture and the latest technology in word-processing

equipment were leased, and two station wagons were rented from Avis for

use by the team. All in all, it was a huge logistical undertaking. Kenyon

& Kenyon faced the same challenge of trying a lawsuit on the road, away

from its home office, and set up its temporary operation in office space pro-

vided by Kodak at 141 Milk Street in Boston, near the courthouse, with its

lawyers housed in apartments rented for the duration.

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