EXPOSED

Rosato & DiNunzio, Philadelphia’s most drama-ridden law firm (Damaged, 2016, etc.), faces perhaps its most dramatic episode ever when it’s threatened from both outside and in.

Sales rep Simon Pensiera’s wrongful-termination case against OpenSpace, from which his boss, Todd Eddington, fired him when his daughter Rachel’s medical expenses rose into the stratosphere, ought to be open and shut—especially since Simon, the son of one of Matty DiNunzio’s oldest South Philly friends, is practically a cousin to Matty’s daughter, Mary, who offers to take the case for free. It turns out, though, that Mary’s partner, Bennie Rosato, has long represented Dumbarton Industries, OpenSpace’s owner, so there’s an obvious conflict of interest. Or maybe not so obvious, Mary and Bennie decide separately after doing a little independent research. Even so, it’s clear that Mary really wants to take the case, and Dumbarton CEO Nate Lence, who’s always had a thing for Bennie, really wants her to leave it alone—so much that when Bennie tries to resolve the conflict by pulling all Dumbarton’s business, Nate files a retaliatory defamation suit seeking $2 million from the newly unemployed Simon, who already can’t afford the bone-marrow transplant Rachel desperately needs. Can things get any worse? Of course they can, as Mary shows when she launches the nuclear option and leaves the firm, a move that not only rocks Bennie’s world, but makes the two former partners adversaries in nearly every sense imaginable. Then Todd Eddington is murdered with all the evidence pointing directly to Simon, and this wild, intricate, yet perfectly clear, greased-lightning legal nightmare still has half its length to run.

Despite some overheated damsel-in-distress complications toward the end, a stellar demonstration of the proposition that although it can’t bring back the dead, “justice was still the best consolation prize going.” The final curtain will find you cheering, and Scottoline will have earned every hurrah.