The Ultimate Resolution
-by Dave Sullivan
Copyright © 2013 by David P. Sullivan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission of the author except for the inclusion of brief quotations in review.
Published by Dave Sullivan at Smashwords.
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PREFACE
This is a work of fiction.
Lake Superior, Raspberry Island, and the Apostle Islands are real, but the town of Bay Harbor and the Chequamegon Band of Lake Superior Chippewa are creations of the author.
The Hennepin County Government Center, Park Point, and Duluth are real places, but Greysolon Health Care Facility and Cherokee Tractor & Implement Company are fictional.
E. G. McKibben, L. H. Lamouria, Coby Lorenzen, and R. R. Parks, are real people who did the scientific research and wrote the articles referenced. The appellate court decisions, when citations are given, are real. National Safety Council Data Sheet No. 1-377-54 is an actual data sheet.
The authorship of ASAE Paper no. 62-633, ASAE Journal, Dec. 1962 by Lamouria, Lorenzen and Parks is gratefully acknowledged. The authorship of "Kinematics and Dynamics of the Wheel Type Farm Tractor" by E. G. McKibben, Agricultural Engineering, 1927 is gratefully acknowledged.
The characters are fictional. The tractor accident and the trial are fictional.
The tractor rollover problem is real.
- Dave Sullivan
DEDICATION
To the three sailboats that showed me the incredible Apostle Islands:
The 24 foot Sloop, Alibi,
The 30 foot Sloop, Golden Girl
and
The 30 foot Sloop, The Dove, which ultimately became Samoset.
"A LAWYER’S TIME AND ADVICE ARE HIS STOCK IN TRADE."
-Abraham Lincoln
President of the United States
1861 – 1865
"LAWYERS SPEND A GREAT DEAL OF THEIR TIME SHOVELING SMOKE."
-Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr., Associate Justice,
United States Supreme Court,
1902 – 1932
"HE THAT ALWAYS GIVES WAY TO OTHERS WILL END IN HAVING NO
PRINCIPLES OF HIS OWN."
Aesop
"ALWAYS DO RIGHT. THIS WILL GRATIFY SOME PEOPLE AND
ASTONISH THE REST."
Mark Twain
INTRODUCTION
Jacob Reynolds Kingsley was a lawyer, a trial lawyer, or was he anymore? He sat in the cockpit of his forty-two foot ketch, the Resolution, at Hanson’s Marina in Bay Harbor, Wisconsin trying to figure the answer to that question. The tiny, quaint, hillside village of Bay Harbor is located on Raspberry Bay in the middle of the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior’s South Shore.
For Jake, the Apostle Islands had always been a safe haven, protection against the problems of everyday life, and a quiet hideaway where one found nature’s beauty and the solitude she provided in cathedral-like forests, secluded beaches and peaceful waters. This time Jake sought more than the usual respite that his weekend and vacation sailing had previously given him. This time he sought a permanent hideaway, not temporary solace, but permanent escape. He had dropped out. Gone. Left. And here he was. Hiding? Maybe. Running? Probably. Doing the right thing? Who knew?
He looked at the brochure from the Apostle Islands Cruise Service he had picked up at the Ship's Store. There at a glance were the Islands he loved.
Jacob Reynolds Kingsley was forty-two years old. He had no knowledge yet of the events that would determine much of his rather uncertain future. The events had begun a long time ago . . .
PART ONE: THE TRACTOR
CHAPTER ONE
Tuesday, August 11, 1964
Jimmy Owens sat atop a wood rail fence along a gravel road on the southern edge of the Ozark Mountains in northwestern Arkansas. In the distance, he could see the trees along the White River as it meandered through his family’s farm.
He watched his father and two brothers working there in the field by the road. Jimmy’s bicycle leaned against the fence where he had left it when he found them. Mother had sent him to find out where they were working. The peaceful farm scene, the warm, bright sun, and the clear blue cloudless sky gave Jimmy a sense of peace and tranquility. He liked it here on the farm. He was glad he lived here and not in some city.
The mid-afternoon Arkansas sun beat down on the three men removing stumps from a field. At a nearby fence separating an adjacent pasture, several cows were gathered watching the activity, their large brown eyes wide in curiosity. Jimmy grinned to himself at the curiosity of the cows. They were funny.
Pa sat up on the new big red Cherokee T-350 tractor looking back at the stump to which the tractor was chained. Pa had just bought it used. It was three years old and just like brand new. Jimmy could hardly wait until they let him drive the new tractor.
The other men were Jimmy’s older brothers, Matthew and Luke. They were a lot older than Jimmy. An "accident," Luke called him. The boys were teenagers when he was born. They always took care of him. He adored them. They were his heroes. They knew how to do everything. Now they were working at the roots with an ax and a grub hoe. As they chopped at the roots, the taut chain kept tension on the stump.
"Try it now, Pa," Luke, the younger brother, drawled as he stepped back, ax in hand watching the stump for more roots.
"Don't think we've got it cleared yet," said Jimmy’s father, adjusting himself on the seat of the tractor.
"Hit it, Pa!" yelled the older son now, a solidly built man in his mid-thirties, "Luke’s got the most of ‘em cut and we're ready to get into town for a cold one!"
"Matt's right, Pa! We've pulled enough stumps in this heat that we've earned a cold beer when this one's done! Besides, that new machine you're ridin' would pull this li'l ol' stump out without us slavin' back here under the sun anyway."
Jimmy’s father smiled. He turned around in the seat of the tractor to face the afternoon sun. Squinting against the sun, he applied the throttle of the tractor. The engine roared as the powerful tractor came to life fighting against the hold the stump of a tree still had to mother earth. Suddenly the front of the tractor rose in the air like a stallion in a fight.
Jimmy watched from the fence at first in surprise and then in terror as the nose of the new red tractor rose up, silhouetted against the sun. He watched his father fall backward from the seat and the tractor flip over rearward, crushing him beneath it, while Jimmy watched from the fence and Matt and Luke stood helplessly by.
It happened so fast, it was over before any of the younger Owens’s realized what happened.
Friday, August 14, 1964
FARM ACCIDENT CLAIMS LIFE
Harris, Ark. (AP) - On Tuesday, Millard Owens of rural Harris was killed when a tractor he was operating rolled over backwards, crushing him. The tractor, a Cherokee T-350, was being used by Owens and his sons to pull stumps on the Owens farm at the time of the accident.
In a St. Louis suburb, Robert England folded the newspaper and tossed it on the table in front of him. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with his hands. Resting his feet on the coffee table in front of him, he thought about how little the article said about what really happened. He knew exactly what happened. England wa
s a safety design engineer for the manufacturer of the T-350. He was employed by Cherokee Tractor & Implement Company.
The standard large rear-wheeled farm tractors sold by Cherokee and other manufacturers in the industry were good farm equipment except for one problem. They had a tendency to flip over backwards. The machine uses a small gear called a pinion gear that is turned by the tractor’s power from the engine and which turns the much larger gear on the wheel and causes the wheel to turn. If those big rear wheels were prevented from turning and the operator continued to apply the throttle to attempt to move forward, the small pinion gear would literally walk right around the larger gear of the wheel, taking the relatively light body of the tractor with it. The result was, of course, that the front of the tractor flipped back over the operator with incredible speed. The operator was completely unprotected and unprepared for the sudden catastrophe, which followed.
"Trouble?" asked his wife Mary.
"Huh?" He looked at her standing in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. She was a trim pleasant looking woman of middle age with a fair complexion, a few freckles and nearly orange hair. Her left hand supported her right arm at the elbow, her right hand holding a filter-tipped cigarette in two fingers, the cigarette pointing straight in the air. It was a way England had noticed that women, including Mary, seemed to hold their cigarettes when they were ready to get into a serious conversation. She blew a puff of smoke in his direction.
"I said, ‘you got trouble?’ You look perplexed."
"Perplexed?"
"The only word I could think of," she answered, "but it fits. What’s up?"
"Oh, I’m still worried about these tractor accidents and why the company doesn’t do anything about it." He shook his head and reached for a cigarette himself. Lighting it with a heavy silver table lighter on the coffee table, he drew heavily before finishing his answer. "I just don’t know what to do," he said.
"Don’t worry, dear," she came to sit beside him on the couch, "you’ll think of something. Just do what you think is right." She smiled at him.
England always felt better when Mary reassured him and then blessed him with her loving smile. Of course, he knew that she knew that it worked and that’s why she did it. And it worked that time as it always did.
"You’re right as usual." He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. "I’ll talk to Ellington tomorrow."
It was three days later before England could get a meeting with his supervisor, Dick Ellington, head of Research & Development at Cherokee.
"We need to do two things, Dick," said England. He sat across from Ellington in Ellington’s private office in the Research & Development section of Cherokee Tractor & Implement Company’s main plant in St. Louis. "We need to properly warn the operator, I mean really warn him, and we need to protect him."
"And just how do you propose to protect the farmer?"
"A rollbar and a seat belt is a start. Reinforced covered cabs would be even better."
"Whoa, Bob! We can’t rebuild the whole tractor!"
"Dick, you and I know that agricultural engineers have known about this problem for years. Some guys at the University of California at Davis developed something to protect the operator seven or eight years ago. It’s not that hard."
"The other companies don't do it, the customers don't want to pay for it, so I doubt Cherokee will buy it," said Ellington. "Look, Bob, we make a good piece of equipment. These accidents, and that’s what they are, are from operator error, not the equipment."
"But the farmers don't really realize the danger," England had protested.
"Well, if you insist, let's do it right. You put your concerns and your recommendations in a report to me and I'll run it through channels."
So after that meeting, England started work on a report to his superiors about the very problem that had killed or severely injured a lot of people including the elder Mr. Owens just last Tuesday and would hurt and kill many more in the future, if something more weren't done about it.
The Owens news item had disturbed England. He read it again. He knew that every day thousands of tractor users were flirting with the danger of injury from the hazard he was working on, but to read about one as he was preparing the report that might effect some changes made him feel guilty for not having pressed harder and earlier for action.
Over a period of weeks, England spent many whole days writing and rewriting his report. He confirmed the authorities for his arguments and footnotes. After explaining the problem, how and why the rollover occurred, and that the operator really didn't comprehend what could happen or how fast, he stressed two main corrective measures. The first was a warning. The second was a design change to provide operator protection.
"The warning," England wrote, "must be sufficient to inform the operator of the real hazard that exists. It is not enough to warn or caution against certain uses. The operator must be informed that in certain situations the tractor may flip over and crush him to death. He must then be told what those situations are and how to avoid them."
"Because the operator may not be the owner, warnings limited to the owner's manual are inadequate. Adequate warnings must also be placed on the tractor itself."
For the protection of the operator, England proposed a type of rollbar like those used in racing cars, which used together with an airplane type seat belt, would prevent the tractor body from crushing the tractor against the ground. He knew agricultural engineers involved in the industry who were testing similar devices. The ASAE, the American Society of Agricultural Engineers of which he was a member, was even considering the development of standards for operator protection systems.
Finally England wrote, "Correction of this design, warning, and instruction for future Cherokee tractors is not enough. Through mailings and some type of advertising, the present owners of these tractors must be made to realize the danger and be given the opportunity for installation of the protective devices on their equipment."
England closed the report with his signature line, title and department, and typed in the required distribution. In this case, the report simply went to Ellington with the usual copies for Research & Development's communication file and the Cherokee General Communications file. He put the original and each copy of the five-page report in its own large manila envelope. They were labeled for appropriate delivery and filing. Roger Winthrop, a young engineer in England's section proofread the report and delivered the envelopes to the designated company internal mail boxes. Ellington had been pessimistic, but certainly, with the gravity of the problem, something would be done. If not he, thought England, who could do something about the problem? No, he thought, he would have to be the one to try, although it might take a long time, perhaps too long.
Nothing happened. Finally, after several more weeks, England talked Dick Ellington's secretary and the receptionist of the Research & Development Department into giving him an appointment with Ellington.
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Up on Lake Superior's South Shore, fourteen year old Jake Kingsley helped his grandfather ready the old wooden sloop for winter storage in Hanson's boatyard on Raspberry Bay in Bay Harbor, Wisconsin.
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England sat on a couch in the reception area of Cherokee’s Research & Development Section, waiting. The time was nearly 11:00 o’clock. His appointment had been scheduled for 10:30. He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table in front of him. At the reception desk, Mavis, the receptionist and Dick Ellington’s personal secretary, glanced at him, then at the clock on the wall. Behind her, Ellington’s office door remained closed.
"I’m sure he’ll be ready for you any minute now, Bob," she said.
Just then, the intercom on her desk phone began to buzz, a harsh, irritating sound that bothered England’s already frayed nerves.
Mavis touched a button which stopped th
e buzzing. She held the receiver to her ear. "Yes, Mr. Ellington? Yes, he’s here, now. I’ll show him in."
Mavis stood and motioned toward the closed door. "Mr. Ellington will see you now." She opened the door for England and remained there as he entered Ellington’s office. He sensed more than saw the door being closed behind him.
"Come in, Bob." Ellington did not stand, but remained seated at his desk. England could see his report on the desk.
"Sit down, Bob."
England sat in one of the two captain’s chairs facing the desk. He waited for Ellington to start the discussion. But, Ellington said nothing. He simply looked at England, then down at the various papers on his desk, including England’s report, and then back at England expectantly.
Finally, England broke the silence. "You’ve read my report?" he asked.
Ellington picked up the document, holding it in his left hand. With his right, he took a still smoldering cigarette from the ashtray, put it to his lips and drew heavily. He blew a stream of thick, gray smoke across the desk at England.
"I have," he said. "Well written," he added. "Well written, indeed."
England relaxed a little. He had not known what to expect from Dick Ellington. His first discussion with Ellington led him to anticipate resistance. He believed Ellington to be a company man, but Hell, I am too, he thought. He also knew Ellington to be a decent engineer and had always thought him to be a good choice to head up the Research & Development Section. If he could get Ellington on his side, he believed he could get Cherokee and ultimately the industry to take action to correct the tractor rollover problems, produce safe tractors and save many lives.
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