The jurors knew the story well and Jesse did not belabor it. He submitted repair estimates from a contractor that totaled $8,900. His other exhibit was a list of furniture, furnishings, and clothing that had been destroyed. The total claim was $11,300.
After a thirty-minute lunch break, Mr. Luna was back on the stand and was cross-examined by Simmons Webb, who painstakingly went through the repair estimates as if looking for fraud. Mr. Luna knew far more about carpentry than the lawyer and they bickered back and forth. Twice Jesse objected with “Your Honor, he’s just wasting time. The jury has seen the repair estimates.”
“Let’s move along, Mr. Webb.”
But Webb was methodical, even tedious. When he finished, Jesse put on Oscar Lansky and then Paul Nikovich with their similar stories. By 4:30 Monday afternoon, the jurors and spectators had heard enough of the horrors of Camille and the damage it caused. Judge Oliphant recessed for fifteen minutes to allow them to stretch their legs and load up on coffee.
The next witness was the contractor who had examined the three homes and estimated the damage. He stood by his work and his figures, and would not allow Webb to nitpick here and there. He knew from years of experience that rising waters almost always leave a flood line, or a high-water mark, and it is usually easy to determine how much water a building took on. In those three homes, there was no flood line. The damage was by wind, not water.
It was almost 7:30 when Judge Oliphant finally relented and adjourned for the evening. He thanked the jury and asked them to return at 8:00 a.m. ready for more work.
Jesse’s first witness Tuesday morning was a professor of civil engineering from Mississippi State. Using enlarged diagrams and maps, he tracked Camille as it came ashore, with its eye between Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis. Using data retrieved from the storm, along with documented eyewitness reports, he walked the jury through the path of the storm surge. He estimated it at twenty-five to thirty feet high at the Biloxi lighthouse, the most famous landmark, and showed large photos of the total devastation between the beach and the railroad track half a mile inland. Beyond the rail line, which was ten feet above sea level, the surge lost its intensity as the waters dispersed over a larger area. One mile inland, it was still five feet in height and was being propelled by horrendous winds. In the area of Biloxi where the plaintiffs lived, the surge was no more than two or three feet, depending on the uneven terrain. He had examined thousands of photographs and videos taken in the aftermath, and was of the opinion that the three homes in question were just beyond the last reach of the surge. Of course, there was extensive flooding in the low areas, but not on Butler Street.
Simmons Webb quarreled with the engineer over his findings and attempted to argue that no one really knew where the storm surge ended. Camille hit in the middle of the night. Filming it at its height and fury was impossible. Witnesses did not exist because no one in their right mind was outdoors.
There was a famous video of a TV weatherman standing in the middle of Highway 90 at 7:30 that evening. The winds were “only 130 miles per hour” and gaining strength. The rain was pelting him in sheets. A gust pummeled him, and for about three seconds his cameraman filmed him tumbling across the median like a rag doll. Then the cameraman went upside down. There was no other known footage of any fool waiting to greet Camille that late in the day.
* * *
By mid-afternoon, Jesse was finished with his case. He and everyone else suffered through the monotonous and impenetrable give-and-take between Simmons Webb and his star witness, an expert in hurricane damage who worked for the American Insurance League in Washington. Dr. Pennington had spent a career poking through debris, photographing, measuring, and otherwise researching damage to homes and other buildings caused by severe storms. After a baffling lecture on the virtual impossibility of knowing for certain whether a piece of building material was damaged by wind or water, he then proceeded to give confounding opinions on the cases at hand.
If Webb’s goal with Dr. Pennington was to sow doubt and confuse the jury, then he succeeded brilliantly.
Two months earlier, Jesse had deposed the expert for two hours and thought he would make a terrible impression on any breathing person in Harrison County. He was stuffy, pompous, well educated and proud of it. Though he had left Cleveland decades earlier, he had managed to hang on to his nasal, clipped, Upper Midwest accent that was like nails on a chalkboard to anyone south of Memphis.