cft, inc

         CFT, Inc.

         In 1995 I was again, voluntarily this time, self employed. I became CFT, Inc. We initially moved from Indiana to Rio Rancho, New Mexico. That fast-growing city, a suburb of Albuquerque, is located almost the same distance from Santa Fe and the Albuquerque airport, fine for business. However, I discovered that being located on the other side of the nation from my regular clients was not good. The Albuquerque Sun Port is a very nice airport. However, airlines do not fly non-stop from there to many other places: Denver, Dallas and Phoenix. Going to see my eastern clients then meant an all-day ride with several stops and more expenses to charge them.

         Litigation was getting nastier and nastier as the auto companies built up a list of cases in which they could suggest to a jury that I was the losing expert. Lawyers for any other auto company would use that data to tell the jury to convince them that I was a poor, unreliable expert witness. I was also finding that lawyers were becoming unreliable about paying. If they did not win the case, they just abandoned their experts. Worse, I was learning that the local non-heavy hitter plaintiff lawyers were not hesitant to ask me to say things that they made up. More than once a small time lawyer called and asked me to review his material so that I could just write a report saying what he wanted. After looking at his file, I said, “Now wait. You think of this case as just a chance to make it big against a deep-pockets defendant. For me, one episode of being exposed as a liar will end my career.”

         On top of that, the disruption in the airline business following September 2001 made air travel tortuous. At the end of 2001, turning age 72, I just gave up. Ramona and I moved closer to Albuquerque in March 2003. My grown kids kept saying “Dad, you had such an adventurous life. You should write a book about your experiences.” 

         OK. This is it.

This is the BIOGRAPHY final section