Designer Times by Bob Gurr
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I also learned a lot more about the Justice Business while there. I was introduced to a very famous judge who was an expert on Abraham Lincoln. When he learned I was the mechanical designer of the World's Fair Audio Animatronic Lincoln he invited me into his private chambers. There I listened in on a conversation between both sides involved in a current case.

Why, these folks were all a big happy club enjoying one another immensely. I got the impression that the plaintiffs and defendants were simply bit players in a much bigger show. Sure not what I saw on TV.

Another Autopia case had some interesting features. Seemed that a lady claimed whiplash, met a doctor who had a great lawyer, and together planned an unusual action. The doctor would do back fusions while the lawyer would tote up a horrendous medical claim featuring a series of back operations. By the time of trial, the poor woman had now lost a lot of back mobility while the doctor and the lawyer had run up their expenses way too far.

As I settled into the witness stand, I made solid eye contact with every juror and received a lot of smiles in return. The plaintiff's lawyer opened with a question..."Is it not true you were all washed up as an automobile engineer at Ford Motor Company in 1952?" I guess he learned I was a car stylist at age 20 and believed I was not qualified to engineer anything....bad move buddy.

Later in the trial an Autopia car was brought to the courthouse loading dock as evidence. This was great since I could now show the jury, judge, and counsel all the safety features I had engineered into the car. Much better than questions and answers. This lawyer still persisted in showing the jury that I had no qualifications. He set out a big paper tablet and ordered me to draw the safety steering wheel. With a swirling flash I drew this big soft wheel for the jury, finishing with a quick center line thru the wheel.

"What's that" he asked. I answered "center line"...the jury giggled while I had the look of canary feathers in my teeth. The plaintiff had no chance after that one.

In the mid 1990s I was invited to act as an expert witness in a two country multimillion dollar litigation involving a marvelous large format film projection system. The claim was made that the defendant company somehow stole the trade secrets from the plaintiff's company. This action was very tedious in that both sides were provided with identical copies of all the manufacturers factory drawings used to build both competing machines. This gave a chance to study a fabulous amount of super secret designs to learn just how this famous system worked.

I had to analyze every design detail and create a lengthy report showing what was identical, and what was different. It turned out that no pieces could interchange between the two machines, other than standardized common nuts and bolts and the use of the same 70mm movie film.

There's a lot of strategy going on in these kinds of suits. Seems the presiding judge gave a boring trade secret case to a trial judge who only liked murder cases, and wanted the thing done and gone. We learned that droll technical stuff bores even the lawyers, thus the reason to hire experts in the trade. In the simplest sense, I was to write an opinion to show that the other expert was full of hooey. He was going to do the same to me.

The other guy was a renowned department head in a large college who was famous for inventing very few products but writing copious amounts of technical papers. I never wrote any papers but did get the chance to design a lot of cool stuff over the years. The judge read both opinions and gave a summary judgment against the plaintiffs. I worked for the defense.

The kicker after this multiyear fight was that the plaintiff was satisfied to spend a million dollars to lose to the defendant, since the defendant could not get any new customers as long as they were being sued. The legal costs were transferred from the legal department to the marketing department and everyone was happy. Of course I went home with some of the winner's money.

oOo

Next Month: Before Walt - Young Car Stylist

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