His stepsister Christina and her lawyer husband Harry Lutz visit him and bring him the legal opinion prepared by his father, a circuit judge, concerning the case of Szyrk v. the Village of Tatamount et al.

To free the dog a destructive procedure has to be performed on the sculpture, but the sculptor tries to prevent this and is granted a preliminary injunction by the judge.

He is trying to build a legal case against the movie producer Constantine Kiester and his associates who he asserts have infringed upon his copyright of his unpublished play.

Both the play and the movie describe an event during the Civil War, where Oscar's grandfather, later to be a judge on the Holmes court, hired two substitutes to fight for him, one for the South, the other for the North.

Oscar is cared for by his stepsister Christina and his girlfriend Lily and is visited by Trish and "Jerry," i.e., Jawaharlal Madhar Pai, the lawyer who had conducted the deposition.