About Time : Suit Over Watch Batteries Is Wound Up After 11 Years

John DeTomaso, a cargo employee for Pan American World Airways, thought he had a good idea on how to make a few extra bucks. So, in 1978, he paid $300 for unclaimed merchandise that the airline stored in bins and periodically sold to the public sight unseen.

In the luck of the draw, two of his bins contained a surfboard, Indian-style costume jewelry and cheap clothing, he said. Another bin contained 13,000 watch batteries.

Those batteries generated a legal dogfight between DeTomaso and Pan Am that dragged on for 11 years in California’s courts.

The case went through 25 judges, four arbitration panelists and two different juries. Along the way, one judge died and one of the attorneys, who spent thousands of hours on the case, retired.

And the legal paper work generated by both sides filled five Bekins moving boxes and two file cabinets.

“I still don’t believe it’s over,” said DeTomaso, who this week received a check from Pan Am for $118,931.44, bringing to an end a suit he brought against the airline in Los Angeles Superior Court.

“And I don’t quite understand any of what happened, including the 44 cents,” the 46-year-old Torrance resident said.

Pan Am attorney George Henzie said the case became so bizarre that at one point DeTomaso “even blamed his appendicitis on Pan Am. . . . It was the kind of case that leads lawyers to retire early.”

DeTomaso had no idea what would lie ahead of him that September day when he took delivery of the cargo bins and set out to sell the batteries. DeTomaso said he had little success until a store clerk suggested he try a big electronics firm.

In one of those twists of fate that change people’s lives, he called Texas Instruments in Dallas.

“I told this woman (at Texas Instruments) that I had 13,000 watch batteries,” DeTomaso recalled. “And she says to me, ‘Gee, we are missing 13,000 watch batteries.’ ”

It wasn’t long before Pan Am’s director of security and an FBI agent showed up at DeTomaso’s front door. He showed them the cargo bin of watch batteries that was stored in his garage.

Pan Am confiscated the batteries and fired DeTomaso, but the FBI dropped the matter, saying it had no jurisdiction.

DeTomaso then filed a grievance through his union demanding that he be reinstated.

During a grievance hearing, it was brought out that the batteries had been flown by Pan Am from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, where they were to be sent to Continental Airlines for delivery to Texas Instruments. But somehow they ended up in the abandoned cargo pile.

The airline said the employee purposefully took a wrong bin, but DeTomaso denied the allegation, saying it was pointed out by a cargo supervisor. DeTomaso produced three canceled $100 checks he had used to pay for the cargo, as well as a copy of the inventory slip listing the batteries.

DeTomaso was eventually reinstated, but he sued Pan Am for $8,000, the amount he claimed he could have made had he sold the batteries.

“They said, ‘Nuts to you,’ ” said Robert Cleaves, DeTomaso’s attorney. “They wouldn’t even give him the amount he paid for the bins, $300.”

DeTomaso claimed in his suit that he suffered emotional distress and defamation of character--alleging that he had been humiliated in front of his son and ignored by his co-workers.

In 1983, a Superior Court jury awarded DeTomaso $265,000 in general damages and $300,000 in punitive damages. But Pan Am appealed, and the verdict was upheld by state a Court of Appeal. Pan Am dug in its heels again, appealing to the state Supreme Court.

The justices threw out the award, ruling that under the federal Railway Labor Act, DeTomaso could only challenge the airline’s alleged emotional abuses through union grievance arbitration.

However, the state Supreme Court gave the green light for DeTomaso to sue Pan Am for the value of the batteries it had taken from him.

The case was retried and in 1988 the second jury decided that the airline had sold property to which it did not have title. Jurors awarded DeTomaso $4.50 for each battery, plus interest.

Once again, Pan Am appealed.

“We raised 12 legal grounds for the appeal and I’m still firmly convinced that they were all correct,” said Henzie, who by that time had taken over the case for another partner.

Last month, the state Court of Appeal upheld the second jury verdict.

DeTomaso said he plans to retire in two years after 25 years with Pan Am and use the money for real estate investments and to start a ceramic tile contracting business. “I’ve never quite felt that I belonged since it happened,” he said.

Said Pan Am’s attorney Henzie: “We thought it very unfair that he was permitted to recover more than double what you can buy those batteries for, $1.99 from Radio Shack.”

But DeTomaso disagreed.

“The batteries each cost $5 plus tax,” he said. “I had to buy one last week for my daughter’s watch.”