The Lawsuit Changes Direction
Ding-dong, ring-dong.
“…Already morning?”
I shut off the alarm that woke me on the morning of March 25 and, as always, opened my email first thing.
Compared to the days when I’d worked at Continent Law Firm, the number of messages had dropped dramatically.
“Still plenty of ad mail and free consultation requests today.”
I reported the spam, sent polite replies asking people to visit the office instead, and clicked the email marked with a star.
Subject: Urgent — Legal Team Must Read
Body: Please check whether there are any issues with the complaint.
“So the legal team leader sent me the complaint. I did say I’d write it myself.”
Tsk.
It must have been because of the call I’d had yesterday with the legal team leader about the complaint.
“You’ve already secured all the evidence, Attorney Cha, and now asking you to draft the complaint too would be shameless. To be frank, it feels like dereliction of duty on the part of the ‘lead’ attorney.”
“Anyone who’s worked at a law firm would know perfectly well what review and supervision the lead attorney is supposed to provide.”
He’d flatly refused, then sent it over before I could beat him to it.
“He’s fast.”
Just like one of Yuria’s executives, everyone here seemed to treat getting things done quickly as a matter of life and death.
Well, they probably cared that much about Twice and took their work seriously.
I got out of bed.
I turned on the lights and sat down in front of the computer.
While the printer worked through the downloaded file, I read the complaint on the monitor.
“Even Oh Ye-ji would understand what this means, and she’s not a lawyer. It’s really well written. Is this what experience looks like?”
There’s a widely known set of twenty guidelines for writing a good legal document.
The first of them is that you have to write differently depending on who the reader is.
In other words, a pleading filed with the court and a legal opinion written for a layperson have to be written in different ways.
And the complaint written by the legal team leader was easy enough to read that even a non-lawyer could follow it.
“I like how he used analogies and examples for the key points too.”
Anyone outside the entertainment industry probably wouldn’t understand why the Indonesian concert-related company had entered into a guarantee contract in the first place.
“If I add an explanation here about how that kind of guarantee contract is common for local agencies, and then supplement it with the calculation of damages caused by that arrangement, it should be enough.”
After I connected the necessary points in my head one by one, I jotted my notes into the printed complaint.
Scratch, scratch.
“I’m almost done.”
Buzz buzz.
The phone I’d expected to ring only once wouldn’t stop vibrating.
Since neither my close friend Choi Jae-woo nor Min Ho-jun was the type to be this persistent, it wasn’t hard to identify the one culprit.
“Oh Ye-ji again.”
Sure enough.
My notification center was packed with messages from Oh Ye-ji on KakaoTalk.
-Uncle Cat!
-I’m going on an overseas fan-con tour!
-(fan-con image) It’s a shame I can’t go to Indonesia T_T
-We were supposed to fly out this Friday, but they said some program got booked in Japan, so we’re leaving today!
Next week Macau, the week after that Taiwan.
Unfortunately, Indonesia was still listed as undecided.
-The drama writer said they wanted to imagine the concert scene, so we invited them to the Japan fan-con!
-Did I do great or what?
There must have been some sort of agreement between Executive Han and AB Broadcasting, because they said pre-production would start immediately too.
They really know how to get things moving.
Come to think of it—
“I should add the increased damages the Indonesian local company is claiming too.”
It wasn’t necessarily an amount they had to pay, but since Yuria was filing suit, it mattered.
Scratch, scratch.
“Perfect.”
I attached my memo, and now all I had to do was head over to Yuria Entertainment.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Yuria Entertainment.
I tapped my temporary employee ID on the legal team door lock and opened the door.
Perhaps to celebrate the legal team finally returning from its three-shift schedule to normal, everyone was at their desks.
“Good morning. I’m Attorney Cha Do-hyuk.”
“Welcome.”
“Attorney Cha, we’ve been waiting for you.”
A large man stepped forward and extended his hand.
“I’m the legal team leader, Lee Yi-hwan. This way, please.”
He led me into the small conference room inside the office.
Kim Seong-woo, the lawyer I’d seen before, was seated beside me.
“Did you check the email I sent before coming in?”
“Team Leader, can’t we do work after we get to the office?”
The owner of the YuriaNumberOne email yawned and grumbled as he spoke.
Then he slapped the marked-up complaint onto the table.
Kim Seong-woo followed suit soon after.
I took out the complaint I’d scribbled on with a pen.
“Same here.”
“Good heavens, Attorney Cha, are you MZ too?”
“Unlike my face, yes.”
“Team Leader, his sense of humor is exactly like Oh Ye-ji’s, isn’t it?”
“Attorney Kim, that is a terribly offensive thing to say.”
Everyone suppressed their laughter.
“Instead, let’s all go home on time today. No matter what happens.”
Between the doubtful Number One and Kim Seong-woo, who just wanted to get to work already, we launched into the full team discussion.
“First, was there any issue with the complaint?”
“Yes! But there’s one sentence that might interrupt the natural flow, so I think it’d be better to cut it.”
Number One pointed out a line that, if left in, might end up becoming a question the defendant could turn back on us.
That’s the exact same part I marked.
So I added that moving the paragraph in question to the front could make the structure more logical.
Other than that, all I could say was that the issues were clear and it read smoothly.
“Anything else to add? Attorney Cha, you raised your hand, so go ahead.”
“I think it would be good to elaborate a little more on why Indonesia involved a guarantee contract.”
I explained that because Southeast Asian concerts generally used guarantee contracts, we needed to spell that out.
The courts were the last institution to find out how the world actually worked.
“That would definitely be better.”
He showed me the materials he’d received from Executive Han.
“As you can see from the graph, it would be hard to argue that the amount of damages calculated in the current complaint is reasonable.”
“We should also note that the damages claimed are growing enormously as time passes.”
“Yes, and if we compare and analyze the scale of Twice’s fan concert tour and add that in, it’ll be much more credible.”
“Quite right.”
Even if no actual damages had occurred in Indonesia for special reasons, this was still absolutely necessary.
For the litigation strategy.
After I passed along the additional points to Number One and Attorney Kim, it was time to wrap up.
“Attorney Cha.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a litigation strategy in mind?”
Once the facts and legal issues had been reviewed, the next step was deciding the strategy for filing suit.
Were we going long-term?
Or short-term?
The contents of the complaint changed depending on the strategy, but judging from the legal team leader’s draft, it matched what I had in mind.
Given the special nature of celebrities, it’s better to end this quickly.
They still had to manage their image.
“We should keep it short. Isn’t that what the complaint was written for?”
“Attorney Cha, our team leader likes being checked up on. He has an alarm going off every hour, you know?”
“Ahem, Vice Lee.”
“Team Leader, I’m a Lee, yes, but ‘Vice Lee’ sounds weird.”
Team Leader Lee lifted the corners of his mouth, looking mildly embarrassed.
I’ve never seen a legal team this cheerful before.
When I’d handled corporate law, I’d worked with in-house legal teams at other companies too. But they’d all been grim.
Maybe that was because we only met when something had gone wrong, but still, I hoped Yuria would never blacken its spirit and lose this warm atmosphere.
At least while Oh Ye-ji is still here.
“By the way, Team Leader Lee, regarding the Indonesian concert—couldn’t we push ahead even if it’s a little late?”
“There’s no legal problem, but realistically it’ll be tough. Even though the PR team is trying hard by hiring local staff in Indonesia, the public sentiment isn’t improving.”
Local staff in Indonesia?
For a moment, a decent idea flashed through my head.
“Then even if we solve this through litigation, we’d still have to pour money into it before the negative image would even start to fade.”
“The kids are so nice, and the whole world just keeps throwing unfair crap at them.”
Attorney Kim and Vice Lee muttered their complaints.
“It’ll be resolved soon.”
“……?”
“So let’s set a deadline with the Indonesian company.”
There was no need to let them drag us around.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Sunday, April 14.
Jo Ji-han rode the elevator up to his apartment.
As he always did on weekends, he checked the entertainment news on his phone.
“They’ve barely even released any songs, and now they’re doing another overseas fan-con!? And they’ve got articles bragging about selling out every show all over the place!”
For most groups, an overseas concert meant sold-out seats and additional shows were a given.
They held back ticket inventory defensively from the start.
“Those damn reporters are nothing but crawling after clicks, cranking out worthless garbage.”
Compared to a main producer who had to go to work even on weekends, entertainment reporters had it pretty good.
They could wait at the airport for celebrities arriving or departing and let the photo journalists do the shooting.
All they had to do was browse the forums, copy some provocative post, and upload it as an article.
“There’s no easier racket than that. Even if they can’t land an exclusive, they can just copy-paste and still get paid. No risk of getting kicked out of the company either.”
Even if they wrote in a tone of criticism, all they needed was that magic phrase about public interest and they were done.
Ding.
It was late at night, so he carefully touched the door lock.
The moment he opened the door and stepped inside, he set his bag on the floor.
That was when—
“You’re home?”
“……!”
He saw his wife sitting on the sofa with her arms crossed.
“What are you doing there?”
“Waiting for my brilliant husband.”
Whatever had twisted again in her, he let out a quiet sigh at the mocking note in her voice.
“What is it this time?”
“What is it this time?”
Thwack!
The large envelope she threw landed on the floor.
“Look at it! I said look!”
He bent down and picked up the envelope. Photos spilled out in a heap.
“…….”
Pictures of a person he’d seen far too often years ago, and of a child he’d never seen before.
“You said a minor was blackmailing you! Then what the hell is this?!
“...You saw the result of the lawsuit, didn’t you. I won.”
She shot him a poisonous look, like the chairman who lorded over everything by clinging to that man’s backing.
Blood might be thicker than water, but these two are disgustingly alike.
“Did you think you could make a mess of everything yourself and then disappear?”
“…….”
“Go on, tell me. Are you going to beg with your head on the floor for mercy again?”
“You—”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. The chairman is already keeping an eye on Twice’s business, isn’t he?”
If things went wrong now, there would be no more silver lining from that person.
Suppressing my disgust, I forced a smile.
“You saw it too. Even the test results—”
“You really are shameless, bringing up a forged DNA test like that.”
“It really isn’t my child.”
“That kid looks exactly like you did when you were young—what do you mean it isn’t yours?”
His wife sprang up and crumpled the mail in her fist.
“Don’t even think about paying child support. Not a single won. If you do, I won’t just sit still either.”
Bang!
She looked more and more like a demon every time I saw her, and I sank back onto the sofa.
“She should just live quietly.”
Like a weed, she was impossible to get rid of.
No matter how much money and how many people I cut away, she still managed to cause a scene like this. Even vomiting out a string of curses didn’t feel like enough.
“I really ought to cut her out for good.”
I unfolded the crumpled mail.
“…What?”
For a moment, I wondered if I was seeing things.
I’d thought it was a lawsuit for child support.
“Yuria Entertainment—damages claim for defamation against Twice?”
I’d received a complaint I’d never expected.