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Robert W. Kearns

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Inventor

The Resume

    (March 10, 1927-February 9, 2005)
    Born in Gary, Indiana
    Engineer
    Invented intermittent windshield wipers (1964)
    Sued the big three automakers (among others) after they began installing the feature without crediting or paying him
    Portrayed by Greg Kinnear in the movie 'Flash of Genius' (2008)

Why he might be annoying:

    After taking apart the mechanism for the intermittent wipers on his son's Mercedes Benz and discovering it was almost identical to his own invention, he had a nervous breakdown (1976).
    His marriage broke up over the stress caused by decades of litigation.
    He was jailed for 35 days for failing to pay alimony to his ex (1990).
    He became convinced he could get the courts to stop the automakers from manufacturing intermittent windshield wipers themselves and force them to buy wipers from him instead.
    He turned down a $30 million settlement offer from Ford, insisting that the case go to trial. The jury awarded him $5.2 million. (Although Ford eventually paid $10 million to prevent further litigation.)
    He was dropped as a client by three law firms.
    His suits against General Motors, numerous foreign auto makers, and several part manufacturers were eventually dismissed when Kearns, acting as his own attorney, missed filing deadlines.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He served with the Office of Strategic Services during World War I.
    When he first demonstrated intermittent wipers to Ford, the company engineers sent him out of the room to make sure that he was not activating the wipers with a remote control in his pocket.
    He may have gotten rather obsessive about it, but the bastards running the big three did rip him off.
    The automakers tried to argue that his patent was invalid because it failed to meet necessary standards of novelty and originality since his wiper system had been built from off-the-shelf parts.
    The argument was shot down in Appeals Court with the observation, 'substantially every invention... consists of former elements in a new assemblage.'
    Acting as his own attorney, he won a $21 million judgment against Chrysler.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 20 Votes: 50.0% Annoying