Publisher Description
The Four Trials of Henry Ford chronicles Henry Ford’s forays into landmark litigation during the early years of the twentieth century. Ford was a man of extraordinary genius in the intricacies and workings of mechanical objects and in the identification and hiring of talented engineers and administrative managers. But he was constitutionally unable to permit a light to shine on anyone other than himself and often employed humiliating tactics to terminate any employee who rose to prominence.
Lawyer Gregory Piché follows Ford’s lonely defense against alleged infringement of the Selden patent on the automobile brought by a powerful automotive monopoly determined to control prices and competition in the emerging automobile market. He explores a minority shareholder oppression lawsuit brought against Ford by the Dodge brothers who initially manufactured all of the mechanical parts for Ford’s cars. He covers Ford’s libel suit against the Chicago Tribune for calling him an “anarchist” and “ignorant idealist” in the midst of the patriotic fervor during the US/Mexico intervention and the run-up to World War I. And finally, he examines a Jewish lawyer’s persistent libel action against Ford for the defamation of himself and his race in anti-Semitic diatribes widely published and circulated in his personally owned newspaper, the Dearborn Independent.
In recounting the Ford litigation, Piché examines Ford’s parallel manipulation of public media to advance his own political and narcissistic agenda. It follows the initial rise of his reputation as a Progressive capitalist to its ultimate erosion as a mean-spirited bigot and contributor to the propaganda that fueled the Holocaust.
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About Gregory R. Piché
Gregory Russell Piché, JD, is an author and lawyer who practices law in Denver, Colorado. He worked in public relations for the Ford Motor Company in the summers of 1963 to 1967 while obtaining a degree in economics from the University of Michigan. He attended law school at the Detroit College of Law, now Michigan State University Law School. He teaches health-care law and ethics in a graduate degree program at the University of Colorado/Denver School of Business. He has represented, pro bono, death-row inmates in Oklahoma and Texas. He is the author of Sham Peer Review: The Power of Immunity and the Breach of Trust, which he self-published in 2012 for the benefit of physicians in peer review trouble. He is an experienced speaker in national and state forums.
About David de Vries
David de Vries, an Earphones Award-winning audiobook narrator and veteran stage actor and director, spent three years in the cast of Wicked and was the last Lumiere in the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast. He has also appeared in numerous films and voiced commercial campaigns for companies large and small, including American Express, AT&T, UPS, Motorola, Georgia-Pacific, Delta Airlines, Coca Cola, and Ford, among others. He can be seen in a number of feature films, including The Founder, The Accountant, Captain America: Civil War, and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. On television, his credits include House of Cards, Nashville, and Halt and Catch Fire.