The Verdict and the Reward
“What was the reason for submitting the registration documents as Exhibit A, No. 5? Because the certified judicial scrivener was dead?”
Attorney Cha Do-hyuk had deliberately hidden the photograph so he wouldn’t give away his litigation strategy.
For this moment.
...What the hell. He actually went looking for a judicial scrivener who’d never even filed a business closure report? Normally you’d just assume they notarized it and leave it at that.
Watching Cha Do-hyuk press the defendant again, Attorney Seon Ryeo-won felt the blood drain from her face.
“Isn’t it true that you stole Plaintiff Lee Kkot-soon’s ID card and seal, then took out a thirty-million-won credit loan from Saemaeul Agricultural Cooperative? And the person who helped prepare those documents was Oh Yoon-tek, correct?”
“And Defendant Oh Yoon-ja, together with Oh Yoon-ji, Oh Yoon-seo, and Oh Yoon-hui, also visited the plaintiff Oh Yoon-sik’s home and robbed him of ten thousand dollars and five million won in valuables, did they not?”
“Your Honor, I submit the police investigative record from that time as evidence.”
He was going all in, bringing out financial records from decades ago and hammering the defendant with the claim that, judged by what the defendant had done to the plaintiff, this written acknowledgment had to be fraudulent as well.
Where the hell did he dig all this up? It’s not even the same bank they’d been using for transactions, and financial records get deleted after ten years!
Even back in judicial training, he had been obsessed with evidence to a pathological degree.
But even then, he had never dragged up a defendant’s past from ten or twenty years ago and used it to argue that their fraudulent intent had been consistent all along.
Did working at Continent make him better that much faster?
If not, then with Cha Do-hyuk’s rigid, uncompromising personality, there was no way he would have toyed around with the complaint like this.
He didn’t even write it as a gift contract for the land compensation in Bubal-eup. He used the defendant’s own wordplay in the acknowledgment itself.
When drafting a complaint, if the type of action feels ambiguous, you leave it blank and let the court decide.
But Cha Do-hyuk had written it as a case seeking to invalidate an uncertain written acknowledgment.
No wonder. The courts almost never accept requests to void a document that the parties signed and sealed, and yet he pushed straight ahead.
As a rule, the courts recognize that a document signed and sealed by the person who made it takes effect according to what is written in the document.
So if the document stated that the land compensation would be gifted, the usual method was to file a complaint seeking rescission of the gift contract itself.
In this case, after all, the plaintiff’s daughter, Oh Ye-ji, had been assaulted.
He would have been using Article 556 of the Civil Act, which says that if the recipient of a gift commits a crime against the donor or the donor’s spouse or children, that can be grounds for revocation.
I thought Cha Do-hyuk would do the same thing, since it’s the kind of tactic even a major firm like Continent would actively recommend, but he didn’t give it much weight.
He had treated that clause as nothing more than a one-line opening salvo.
As if the rest of the statutes were more than enough.
When the defendant first came in for consultation, he had probably thought the case itself would be easy.
The quality of a lawyer shows in the complaint.
But then again, if the plaintiff transferred the land compensation to the defendant in accordance with the written acknowledgment, only the plaintiff would end up carrying a debt of roughly 150 million won once taxes and other expenses were accounted for.
Article 557 of the Civil Act, about changes in the donor’s financial condition and revocation of the gift, was only a secondary point too.
“Unbelievable.”
To think that all of this had been done solely to paint the defendant as a fraud.
It was like laying a legal trap in the court record, a warning to the defendant never to try to pick at the plaintiff again.
Come to think of it, the one who signed the acknowledgment was Oh Yoon-sik, but Lee Kkot-soon was listed as a plaintiff too... Damn it, I just ran out of time.
If she had been retained when the complaint was drafted, this would not have ended in such a crushing defeat today.
No. Even if I’d been retained after all the preparatory briefs were submitted, I was still careless.
Party standing was the most basic of the basics, and she had overlooked it.
It was not a difficult thing to check the real estate registry.
“Haa.”
I got thoroughly outplayed by Cha Do-hyuk.
Crazy men were still crazy men, no matter how much time passed.
“That will be all.”
“Will the defense conduct cross-examination?”
“...Yes.”
After the long witness examination and the final arguments came to an end, Seon Ryeo-won reached a single conclusion.
Should I tell my husband and bring him over to our firm?
He had little experience, yes, but if they hired him as a partner attorney...
Maybe there was a chance he could settle into one of the top ten firms.
“With that, I will conclude the arguments. The judgment will be handed down in this courtroom on March 15, 2024, at 2 p.m.”
* * *
The final judgment date had been set.
It was March 15.
The mission’s last day.
Judging from the judge’s expression and the defense’s arguments, our chances of winning were very high.
“Counselor, do I need to go to court on March 15 too?”
“You don’t have to. But if you want to hear the winning verdict right away, you can go.”
We had filed through the electronic litigation system, so we could check the result online.
“There hasn’t even been a verdict yet. How can you say it’s a win? So, are you going?”
“Yes. I don’t have to, but I want to hear it.”
Win or lose.
In the words the judge read out, the results of all that effort were laid bare.
And this time there’s a mission riding on it too.
It was a better location for getting home from court, too. Once the reward came in, it would be easy to check it right away.
“What will you do, ma’am? If you do go, I’ll wait in front of the courthouse again today.”
The aunt thought it over for a long while, then smiled.
“Then I won’t go. The time back and forth is time too, and I’ve already been away from the flower shop too much.”
The young lawyer had told her the win was all but certain, so she’d been less anxious, but the date of the ruling would probably set her heart jumping around again, and she didn’t think she could stand being in the courtroom for it.
“Then I’ll go and bring you back good news instead.”
* * *
March 14, 2024, 2 p.m.
Civil Courtroom No. 31.
After the final argument ended, a call came in from an unfamiliar number.
I assumed it was a consultation request from another client, but it turned out to be older sister Ryeo-won Seon. She asked to meet in person sometime.
I naturally refused.
If she had something to say, she could have done it over the phone. If she insists on meeting face-to-face, the reason is obvious.
Since no one from the defense side had shown up at all, it seemed clear she was asking me to “take a look at this case.”
Not a chance.
“Please rise.”
The court officer announced the panel’s entrance.
Then the judge came in.
“There are ten cases to be decided today. I will render judgment in the order of case number. First, the ruling in case 2023Gadan 12345 concerning the invalidation of a land compensation acknowledgment.”
After the summary of the judgment came the findings.
That the defendant had defrauded the illiterate plaintiff with the written acknowledgment.
That the defendant had assaulted the plaintiff’s child.
That the defendant had committed perjury on the witness stand.
That the evidence submitted had been obtained unlawfully.
And finally, that the defendant had also defrauded the plaintiff, Lee Kkot-soon.
Then came the order.
“The court rules in favor of the plaintiff.”
It was over.
“An appeal may be filed within two weeks from the date the written judgment is served...”
I didn’t know whether the defendant would actually appeal, but for now, we had protected Oh Yoon-sik’s assets and Oh Ye-ji’s future.
If there’s no appeal, the notification window will appear soon.
Sure enough, before the judge had even risen from the bench, the system appeared.
<Mission> completed.
Would you like to receive your reward? [Y/N]
...At last, it’s done.
If I’d submitted the complaint even one day later, I might have run out of time.
I left the courthouse.
I decided to go home and collect the reward there, both to match it against the rewards I’d already received and because it was better suited for it. I opened my smartphone.
-Hello?
“Auntie, we won. Please tell Oh Yoon-sik as well.”
-Young lawyer, thank you so much! I’ll put flowers on the consultation table every single day.
“That’s all right. It was only natural for me to do.”
Then I told her what to do if the defendant appealed.
-Tell Sooyoung that she raised a good son, and that I’m truly grateful.
“Auntie, can’t you hear applause from the sky right now?”
-You’re so cheeky.
“All right, see you tomorrow!”
As for Oh Ye-ji, I can just leave her a KakaoTalk message.
Time to go home first.
* * *
The moment I opened the front door, I brought up the system window.
I took a deep breath and pressed the YES button.
A photograph fell out of the air.
“What is it this time?”
All-black exterior.
A long hood and a sharp front profile.
It wasn’t the car that had hit my mother and fled.
“A Benz badge, and gull-wing doors?”
It was a car with doors that opened like a seagull spreading its wings.
I turned on the search lens and looked up the model. Apparently there was a great deal of interest in unusual vehicles, because it gave the car a lot of coverage.
I clicked on a test-drive review from a blog.
“A Benz SLS MAG GX. It was discontinued with the Final Edition in November 2013, and there aren’t many of them in Korea.”
And the license plate, faintly visible in the photo: 2X-DU-4045.
“So I’m supposed to find the owner of the vehicle.”
It was an old car, but if it hadn’t been scrapped, the plate would still be alive.
Then I only needed to check the vehicle registration record.
Of course, depending on whether the vehicle belonged to someone else and whether it was registered for sale, the scope of what I could access would change, so getting the exact information might be difficult.
“I saved money for times like this.”
I asked the Telegram private-investigation service to identify the owner of that plate.
The message said the cost would be determined by the amount of time required, the personnel needed to carry out the request, and the information involved.
After a long sigh, I took out the photographs I’d received as mission rewards until now.
The photograph from the first mission reward.
A black-and-white panoramic view of Seoul, probably from the 1960s.
I narrowed down the places where rice planting had been done at the time.
Dongdaemun District and Gangnam District had a lot of surviving photos in the history museum, so I could rule them out right away.
After digging through even a newspaper museum, I had learned the location was near Wanjeongsan Station.
From the second photograph, I had identified the middle-aged man with the ponytail performing a pose with his chest pressed forward.
He also had an index finger injury, or some kind of deformity.
Then there was a high chance that this middle-aged man was the owner of the vehicle in question.
“Not the defendant in my mother’s case. ...A witness?”
Or an accomplice to the crime?
But in a case with such clear facts, can there even be a criminal accomplice? Other than the defendant and the judge?
It wasn’t a murder or a terror case. It was only a traffic accident.
I wanted to dismiss the idea as nonsense, but something about it bothered me.
I had once witnessed a world at Continent that the rank and file were never meant to know existed.
“For now, I’d better keep the possibility open.”
For the retrial, too.
Buzzz.
My smartphone vibrated.
It was a KakaoTalk message from Oh Ye-ji.
The screen was a carnival of emojis featuring a yellow cat nodding its head.
“This is dizzying.”
“......?”
Did she recommend me to her company as a lawyer?