Dead Man's Rule : A Novel Book

The Dead Man’s Rule—a law that bars one party of an oral contract from testifying about the agreement if the other party is dead.

Ben Corbin, a young, up-and-coming lawyer, takes on a seemingly straightforward case dealing with the legal ownership of a safe-deposit box. But he soon discovers the case is not as clear-cut as it first appeared.

Not only is his client, Dr. Mikhail Ivanovsky, an eccentric Russian scientist with a questionable past, but Ben also suspects that Ivanovsky is hiding something important.

It isn’t until the other party suddenly dies and the opposing attorney invokes the Dead Man’s Rule, that Ivanovsky discloses the whole terrifying truth, and why Ben must win. But the old law leaves Ben without his key witness, and—barring a miracle—without any chance of winning.

“The author paints an elegant fiction that is quite close to reality.”

—Diuto Esiobu
Professor of Microbiology, Florida Atlantic University
Federally-funded bioterrorism countermeasures researcher

Rick Acker is a former Chicagoan who does his best work while traveling. In fact, he pecks out pages every day while riding the commuter train to his “real job” as a San Francisco litigator.