MsTRIAL | Film Adaptation of Off-Broadway Play | An inappropriate but undeniable sexual attraction spins out of control, leading to an internationally famous lawyer being accused of raping his beautiful, brilliant young associate after an alcohol-fueled victory celebration, and sparking a ferocious legal battle with startling results, as the law in all its rigidity attempts to address a very grey, uncertain area of human conduct. | “Devastating” / “Law & Order meets John Grisham” ~New York Theatre Guide | “A Potent Salvo in Détente Between Sexes" ~Los Angeles Times

SYNOPSIS:

John Paris is one of America’s most renowned trial lawyers. With offices in an unnamed mid-sized city, his practice covers the United States and several foreign nations. John has a new client and a case close to home, representing the family of nine-year-old Carley Perucci, killed in a tragic train derailment, along with 17 other innocent victims.

Paris, a lone wolf standing up for his clients, has always tried his cases alone. But that was before he first saw Karen Lukoff, the shinning young star of the local DA’s office, striding into the courthouse. A third-generation lawyer, Karen is a bright, driven, gifted trial lawyer who, coincidentally, is not merely attractive—she’s stunning.

A few weeks later, John surprisingly hires the first trial associate to ever work for him: his nephew Dan Burks, who has been practicing corporate law in San Francisco, has always dreamed of working with his legal-legend uncle, but has no litigation experience, at all.

Two weeks later, even more surprisingly, especially to John's wife, he hires Karen, luring her with an offer she can’t refuse, a hefty salary and the chance to work with one of the most famous trial lawyers in America. It’s her chance to “run with the big dogs” and is irresistible, with or without the money.

John’s wife, the psychology professor, is not the only one who wonders what’s up. So does Karen’s boyfriend. And, at some level, so does Dan, though he’s “looked up to John Paris ever since he could look up.” So, what is up with John? Is he drawn to Karen because of her looks, her talent, or a healthy dose of both? As Karen tells her mother: “Maybe I got the job because I’m damned good at what I do, mom... couldn’t it be that simple?”

Nothing that simple would be worth watching. But, for anyone who questions John or his motivation, the clincher is . . . Karen is every bit as good as advertised.

And thus it begins, much like the train that carried little Carley, picking up more and more speed as it rolled down the track. In Carley’s case, the train went faster and faster until it couldn’t hold the track and crashed in a heap of twisted, smoking metal.

The train carrying John, Karen and Dan is not so different. The three of them dive into the case, into long nights fueled by adrenaline and John’s seemingly limitless supply of intensity and testosterone. In John’s analogy, it’s much like being thrown into combat together. John and Karen fall into a comfortable, intimate rhythm, two soldiers preparing for combat, trading legal discourse, flirtation, late night brain storms, like two lions in the wild, drawn together fast and close as only combat can.

Dan, meanwhile, is in way over his head. He and Karen are instant friends and playmates. Dan happens to be gay, but it doesn’t matter. John still doesn’t like it, irrational as that may be. And, on the legal plain of battle, John gives Dan no quarter. Dan might as well be a raw recruit in the Marine Corps. He’ll either wash out or he’ll make it. As John says, “They throw babies in the water; they don’t show them a video.”

But, the true enemy remains the railroad—as points out the railroad attorneys in a local bar, “That’s the enemy. That’s who we kill.” And, in the end, the railroad, pushed to the brink, and facing a verdict that could rock them, finally settles, the night before closing argument. For an enormous sum. So, the case is over. Not the film.

Following a wild, drunken celebration at the Paris offices, John and Karen, left alone, become playfully but increasingly intimate, and Karen finds herself sliding imperceptibly down that slippery slope, to the very brink of intercourse with her mentor, her partner in the legal war just won, John Paris, this amazing, brilliant, unhappily married older man.

If John had slowed down, who knows what might have happened, but he doesn’t. When Karen comes to her tequila-clouded senses and tells John to stop, first gently, then more insistently, he . . . doesn’t. In seconds, John is inside of her and her panicked scream comes a half-moment too late.

The following morning, John Paris is arrested and charged with rape.

And, instinctively, the lion and the lioness separate—to two opposing hills across the plain—a matter of seconds from a mismatched but destined mating, now moral miles apart.

John Paris is the F. Lee Bailey of his day and larger than life. What does Karen’s former boss, the District Attorney, do? What about Dan? Does he side with his new friend Karen, or his blood relative and lifelong hero?

Not only does Dan take John’s side, having witnessed Karen’s provocative behavior at the victory party, dancing a sizzling limbo and enticing John as they circled each other. Dan has also been overlooked and berated in comparison to her for months. Dan not only turns on Karen, he takes John’s case. For some reason—known only to John until the end—he hires Dan to defend him.

Who wins? What really happened? Who is right? Legally? Morally? Which is which?

In the end, those decisions are left to the audience. MsTRIAL is not a film that wraps it in a bow in the end.

There is no “win” in this. Maybe some justice. That is a question for the audience.

There is more to the story and more to the script, a deposition of Karen defended by Assistant District Attorney Cathryn Adler, according to Karen, the customary “empathetic young female.” In the end, John’s confrontation with Dan and with his own conscience do what no court of law could or would.

MsTRIAL is not, in the end, a legal drama, though it is about lawyers and populated by lawyers, trying one case while living their own. It is about people who happen to be lawyers, facing issues and choices which people in every culture on earth face with a regularity seldom admitted. Those choices and issues cannot be resolved in a court of law. Not in the gray land in between— the land explored by MsTRIAL.

“The most realistic recreation of a legal battle I have ever seen.” ~ W. Reed / Retired / NY Supreme Court