Technology Puts a Dream House on Hold

Dream Home

When Katzenberg decided to build a vacation home for his family, he chose the skiing enclave of Deer Valley, UT, and spared no expense. Katzenberg's builders found American chestnut wood in an old building in New England, which was transported to Deer Valley to become the floor of the new home. Unfortunately, the home's heating system was an expensive highway of hoses with problems that could spell doom for Katzenberg's beautiful floors.

Heatway Systems of Springfield, MO, distributed radiant heating systems that used rubber hoses embedded into floors. The hoses transported hot water, which radiated from the hoses to provide heat. One version, the Entran II, was manufactured by Goodyear and sold throughout the U.S. from 1989 to 1993. These hoses were installed outside to melt ice and snow with the flick of switch, as well as throughout the home, including underneath the chestnut floors.

Katzenberg was among the homeowners who soon began reporting problems with the hoses, claiming they became brittle and broke easily. Heatway and Goodyear were soon in court. See Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Chiles Power Supply, Inc., 7 F. Supp. 2d (N.D. Ohio 1998).

Goodyear agreed that the defective Entran II hoses had to be replaced, but removing them was neither an easy nor inexpensive endeavor. The parties argued over compensation, and unable to resolve the dispute, Katzenberg sued Goodyear, seeking more than $5 million in damages.

The Technology

To show the jury how difficult removing the hoses would be, Katzenberg's attorney from Holland & Hart turned to the firm's in-house litigation support shop, Persuasion Strategies. It differs from most in-house operations because it handles work not just for the firm, but for outside companies and even other law firms ' including Holland & Hart's competitors. The firm ran a conflict check and then handed the project to Pen Volkmann, director of graphics and video services. He used computer animation, a physical Fome-Cor model from Alcan Composites USA Inc., and a computer-aided visual tour of the Katzenberg home to show the jury what it would take to remove the hoses without destroying the home.

The virtual reality, video tour and animation experience did not come without challenges. The video tour had been previously shot before Volkmann's team joined the litigation, so they had to bump up the luminance and speed up the playback to give the jurors the best views of the home. Furthermore, because filming was done out of sequence, it required additional editing. The Katzenberg team took more than two hours of digital video mini-tape recordings and condensed it into a presentation that lasted less than 15 minutes.

The animation was created with Autodesk Maya software running on Apple's Mac quad-core G5. For the computer-aided visual tour of the home, Volkmann used Apple's QuickTime Virtual Reality software, which was loaded into inData Corp.'s Trial Director 5.0, running on Microsoft's Parallels Windows software. The presentation gave the jury a panoramic view of the home, and provided close up shots, showing how the American chestnut floors were integrated delicately into the other wood in the home.

Animation Hurdles

Creating the animation also had its hurdles. Because the architect had done the drawings by hand and not CAD, Volkmann was required to do scanning and additional manipulation. The team's goal was to illustrate the extensive work involved with creating the woodwork.

The Defense

The Goodyear team included both Aspen-based Garfield & Hecht, and members of the Denver office of Philadelphia's Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll. Their mission was to reduce the amount of a potential damages award. They argued ' and illustrated ' that it was unnecessary to destroy the house to replace the hose.

For their technology, the Goodyear team turned to Mike Lombardi, a former Garfield & Hecht paralegal who had left the firm, earned an M.B.A., and started his own litigation support shop, Tucson-based Vertigrate Inc. Lombardi's approach was to create a presentation that would take full advantage of his hardware and software and the high technology facilities at Denver's Alfred A. Arraj United States Courthouse. Lombardi utilized the courtroom's plug-and-play capabilities, and set a goal of creating an uncomplicated presentation.

To help make the case that the Entran II could be removed without wrecking the entire house, Lombardi loaded both blueprints and related documents into TrialDirector 5.0, using IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T42s. Goodyear rejected Katzenberg's position that replacing the Entran II system would require tearing out the cabinets and wood trim. Its attorneys agreed that the courtroom and its policies helped the defense present its case effectively. They stuck to tools like Microsoft's PowerPoint, because typical jurors are familiar with visual tools like that. They thought the Katzenberg team may have gone overboard with its presentation ' which ran the risk of alienating the jury.

The Verdict

Both sides claimed victory when the jury returned its verdict on Feb. 9, 2007, after a five-day trial. The jury found $2.17 million in damages ' more than Goodyear had wanted to pay, but less than the $5 million Katzenberg said was needed to save his American chestnut floors. Repairs are currently underway.

David Horrigan is a Washington, DC-based attorney and writer, and is a former reporter for Incisive Media's National Law Journal. This article appeared in Law Technology News, a sister publication of this newsletter.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, produces movies, such as the blockbuster Shrek series, using the latest technology. Goodyear, the nation's largest tire company, is no stranger to technology, spending $372 million last year on research and development. So, when Katzenberg and Goodyear went to court last year in a dispute over replacing defective Goodyear heating hoses at Katzenberg's vacation home, they both turned to visual technology to support their positions. The battle provides a glimpse into how trial technology can be used to show jurors not just the structure and mechanics of a multimillion dollar home, but also the craftsmanship and rare wood that went into it ' an important issue when the two sides could not agree on how to repair leaking pipes in A.E., Inc. v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Inc., No. 05-CV-01317 (D. Colo. 2007).

Rare Wood

The American chestnut tree was once a ubiquitous part of the eastern United States terrain. The American chestnut was an important part of the region's ecosystem as well as an important part of the economy, with its nuts serving as a cash crop and its lumber furnishing homes. However, a blight decimated the American chestnut, leaving the tree almost extinct.

Dream Home

When Katzenberg decided to build a vacation home for his family, he chose the skiing enclave of Deer Valley, UT, and spared no expense. Katzenberg's builders found American chestnut wood in an old building in New England, which was transported to Deer Valley to become the floor of the new home. Unfortunately, the home's heating system was an expensive highway of hoses with problems that could spell doom for Katzenberg's beautiful floors.

Heatway Systems of Springfield, MO, distributed radiant heating systems that used rubber hoses embedded into floors. The hoses transported hot water, which radiated from the hoses to provide heat. One version, the Entran II, was manufactured by Goodyear and sold throughout the U.S. from 1989 to 1993. These hoses were installed outside to melt ice and snow with the flick of switch, as well as throughout the home, including underneath the chestnut floors.

Katzenberg was among the homeowners who soon began reporting problems with the hoses, claiming they became brittle and broke easily. Heatway and Goodyear were soon in court. See Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Chiles Power Supply, Inc. , 7 F. Supp. 2d (N.D. Ohio 1998).

Goodyear agreed that the defective Entran II hoses had to be replaced, but removing them was neither an easy nor inexpensive endeavor. The parties argued over compensation, and unable to resolve the dispute, Katzenberg sued Goodyear, seeking more than $5 million in damages.

The Technology

To show the jury how difficult removing the hoses would be, Katzenberg's attorney from Holland & Hart turned to the firm's in-house litigation support shop, Persuasion Strategies. It differs from most in-house operations because it handles work not just for the firm, but for outside companies and even other law firms ' including Holland & Hart's competitors. The firm ran a conflict check and then handed the project to Pen Volkmann, director of graphics and video services. He used computer animation, a physical Fome-Cor model from Alcan Composites USA Inc., and a computer-aided visual tour of the Katzenberg home to show the jury what it would take to remove the hoses without destroying the home.

The virtual reality, video tour and animation experience did not come without challenges. The video tour had been previously shot before Volkmann's team joined the litigation, so they had to bump up the luminance and speed up the playback to give the jurors the best views of the home. Furthermore, because filming was done out of sequence, it required additional editing. The Katzenberg team took more than two hours of digital video mini-tape recordings and condensed it into a presentation that lasted less than 15 minutes.

The animation was created with Autodesk Maya software running on Apple's Mac quad-core G5. For the computer-aided visual tour of the home, Volkmann used Apple's QuickTime Virtual Reality software, which was loaded into inData Corp.'s Trial Director 5.0, running on Microsoft's Parallels Windows software. The presentation gave the jury a panoramic view of the home, and provided close up shots, showing how the American chestnut floors were integrated delicately into the other wood in the home.

Animation Hurdles

Creating the animation also had its hurdles. Because the architect had done the drawings by hand and not CAD, Volkmann was required to do scanning and additional manipulation. The team's goal was to illustrate the extensive work involved with creating the woodwork.

The Defense

The Goodyear team included both Aspen-based Garfield & Hecht, and members of the Denver office of Philadelphia's Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll. Their mission was to reduce the amount of a potential damages award. They argued ' and illustrated ' that it was unnecessary to destroy the house to replace the hose.

For their technology, the Goodyear team turned to Mike Lombardi, a former Garfield & Hecht paralegal who had left the firm, earned an M.B.A., and started his own litigation support shop, Tucson-based Vertigrate Inc. Lombardi's approach was to create a presentation that would take full advantage of his hardware and software and the high technology facilities at Denver's Alfred A. Arraj United States Courthouse. Lombardi utilized the courtroom's plug-and-play capabilities, and set a goal of creating an uncomplicated presentation.

To help make the case that the Entran II could be removed without wrecking the entire house, Lombardi loaded both blueprints and related documents into TrialDirector 5.0, using IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T42s. Goodyear rejected Katzenberg's position that replacing the Entran II system would require tearing out the cabinets and wood trim. Its attorneys agreed that the courtroom and its policies helped the defense present its case effectively. They stuck to tools like Microsoft's PowerPoint, because typical jurors are familiar with visual tools like that. They thought the Katzenberg team may have gone overboard with its presentation ' which ran the risk of alienating the jury.

The Verdict

Both sides claimed victory when the jury returned its verdict on Feb. 9, 2007, after a five-day trial. The jury found $2.17 million in damages ' more than Goodyear had wanted to pay, but less than the $5 million Katzenberg said was needed to save his American chestnut floors. Repairs are currently underway.

David Horrigan is a Washington, DC-based attorney and writer, and is a former reporter for Incisive Media's National Law Journal. This article appeared in Law Technology News, a sister publication of this newsletter.