
Occasionally, despite all attempts to avoid a
dispute sinking into a law suit, you think you might be facing one. You
will need good, nationally recognized people, who are articulate and
experienced. I have been an expert witness in two lawsuits, one of
which actually went to trial! As it happens, in both cases, my client
was satisfied with the outcome. My years of teaching all levels of
persons how centrifuges work, comes in handy when the audience is non
technical persons. Plus, I have spent countless hours reading
specifications and working out compliance strategies.
One client recently called and asked me to look
over the contract and the plant startup reports to see if they had a
good case to take to court. To be sure, the centrifuge manufacturer did
a shoddy job optimizing, and the performance was a long way from that
required by the spec, but the smoking gun was the sludge description.
The engineer specified a sludge that was completely unrelated to the
plant! What were they thinking of! Since the plant could not possibly
produce specification sludge, the centrifuge people could opine that
with the specified sludge, naturally they would have no trouble meeting
the spec, but gee, with this sludge, that’s another matter.
So no law suit, or at least not against the
centrifuge manufacturer.