Inventor Wins $3.32 Million in Suit Over Smoke Alarm
A man who said the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas inspired him to invent a portable smoke alarm for travelers won a $3.32-million verdict Wednesday from two companies that promised to help develop the device, but then marketed their own detector.
The verdict, returned after a five-week trial in Los Angeles federal court, protects Fred W. Stilwell’s contractual rights to an invention that sold 4,000 units in its first two months on the market.
Stilwell--an Oregon farmer, rancher and part-time inventor--had survived a fire in his own home before the 1980 Las Vegas blaze that left 84 people dead. He checked out of the MGM Grand three days before the fatal blaze erupted.
Beams Light
“That’s what tripped it off,” Stilwell said Wednesday. “I registered my idea within two days of the MGM fire. I didn’t even go to work for three days.”
His device straps over a hotel room door, sounding an alarm and beaming a light down on the doorknob when smoke is detected. The device is about the size of a transistor radio, and a detachable digital clock doubles as a travel alarm clock, said Stilwell’s attorney, Kevin Roddy.
Dubbed SleepSafe, it also contains a detachable flashlight that can be used to find one’s way out of an unfamiliar building, such as a hotel, in the dark, he said.
The two fires “taught him that the most difficult thing in a fire is to get out of the room, because the electrical system usually fails, and it’s dark,” Roddy said.
The dispute in the lawsuit stemmed from Stilwell’s contract with two Orange County businessmen to help obtain Underwriters Laboratories certification that would enable the device to be distributed through major retail outlets. The contract then called for the companies to take over distribution, with a percentage of the profits going to Stilwell.
But Roddy said the companies, Wing Wah Chong, a Hong Kong corporation headed by Laurence K. Chen of Palos Verdes Estates, and American Scitec, the company’s American representative, never delivered on their promises and, in fact, began distributing a similar device, which featured a burglar alarm as well.
The defendants, who also included John S. Skarman of Huntington Beach, president of the firm that distributed the competing device, and Roy R. Ludt of Costa Mesa, another official of American Scitec, claimed that they had done everything possible to obtain the UL listing, but that design limitations within the device itself made it impossible.
The defense also argued that another company that preceded American Scitec in the contract had made the actual promise to design the product according to UL specifications.
U.S. Magistrate George H. King threw out Stilwell’s trade secrets claim, ruling that there was no evidence that the defendants’ stole Stilwell’s invention.
But a six-member jury awarded Stilwell compensatory damages totaling $3.32 million on four of the five remaining causes of action, including breach of contract and fraud.
Attorney Douglas Vickery, representing most of the defendants, said the defense believes that the total jury award was only $2.8 million, and he said motions pending before the court could reduce the total to as low as $35,000.
“How the jury found what they did, I’m still a bit perplexed,” Vickery said. “But the case has a long way to go before we actually know what the numbers are.”
