Inventor Settles Ford Suit for $10.2 Million

Robert Kearns, who owns the patent for intermittent windshield wipers, today settled a 12-year-old lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. for $10.2 million.

U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn approved the settlement after spending most of a 20-minute court hearing making sure Kearns understood the terms of the deal.

Kearns’ lawsuits against 19 other auto makers remain active. He contends that each failed to pay him royalties for using his invention--a windshield wiper that starts and stops at intervals.

Bill Durkee, Kearns’ attorney, said the next target probably will be Chrysler. The nation’s No. 3 auto maker behind General Motors and Ford has agreed not to argue about whether Kearns’ patents are valid, a contention that had been argued during the suit against Ford.

Durkee said he would have liked to continue the case against Ford but that, “as a practical matter, with all the other cases pending, there was a logjam.

Kearns, 63, a former resident of Gaithersburg, Md., now lives in a one-bedroom rented apartment in Houston. He is a former engineering professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. He said he plans to use the money to pay legal bills and, perhaps, buy a house in Texas.

He also said proceeds from the Ford case will be used in lawsuits against the other defendants, including GM, Chrysler and Japanese and European auto makers.

Originally, Kearns sought $141 million and had rejected a $30-million settlement offer from Ford.