Subject: Re: OK Bombing tort suit STOP THE ABSURDITY
From: glhurst@onr.com (Gerald L. Hurst) 
Date: Jun 01 1995
Newsgroups: misc.legal

In article <3qjep5$knf@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>, eking@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu 
(Elizabeth C King) says:

>If this is truly a baseless claim, then they shouldn't have a problem 
>hiring a lawyer to file a motion to dismiss.  Should cost about a 
>thousand dollars.  If there is an issue that they might have been able to 
>prevent the bombing by acting prudently, then they might have to pay a 
>little bit more.

My, my that is a rosy picture of justice.  Issues don't "exist," they are 
created by attorneys.  If 100 people were killed by a meteor strike there 
would still be a lawsuit against someone.

>>We know NOW someone can take it and make a bomb.  (Note the writer
>>mentioned it had to be detonated with dynamite, which is not a household
>>item, not accessible off the counter, which I think is quite significant
>>as to "misuse".)  Maybe now the fertilizer companies should look into
>>neutrailizing.  But until this happened, how could they have forseen it?
>
>You said, "I don't understand how knowing the fertilizer was 
>explosive..."  Your query assumes that there was knowledge of it being 
>explosive.  So, maybe when the fertlizer companies knew (as it appears 
>you believe happened a while ago) that the fertilizer can be used as 
>explosives, they should have looked into neutralizing it.

Why is there any question about knowledge in the ammonium nitrate 
fertilizer industry concerning the use of the material as an explosive?  
Of course they know about these things. Take three guesses at the name of 
the largest explosives company in the world.

Much of the "what if" conversations in this forum seem to require the 
absence of knowledge concerning the underlying undisputed facts.  

Let me state a few highly probable propositions:

1. Fertilizer companies know more about the use of AN in explosives than 
any other organizations except for some government agencies such as Bu 
Mines.

2. The much-vaunted desensitized AN patent calls for the addition of 10 
percent diammonium phosphate.  If we're going to throw a billion pounds of 
soluble phosphate on the ground we might as well go back to phosphate 
detergents.

3. I and lots of other people could make a perfectly functional explosive 
from the desensitized material by methods anybody could use with a few 
instructions.

4. If you ban AN completely and by some miracle are able to live without 
it without severe problems, I and lots of other people can show you how to 
make explosives without it.

5. The desensitization patent does not present any credible evidence that 
that desensitized material would not have done essentially the same damage 
that the untreated material did.  Much of the description of the proposed 
process in the media is based on hearsay.  

6. There will be no economic free ride in modifying AN to make it safer. 
The more you are willing to pay directly or indirectly, the safer it can 
be made.

The regulatory agencies such as Bu railroads, DOT, BATF, FBI, OSHA, MESA 
and scads of state and local fire marshals, etc. are and have been for 
many decades aware of the explosive properties of AN, and they have always 
been aware that an incident like that in OKC was possible.

I am an independent expert on explosives, including AN explosives. One of 
my first cases as an expert witness was an ANFO bombing/murder in the 
Western District of Oklahoma in about 1972.  The problem we are facing is 
a complex one that probably does not have a simple technical answer, It 
may be that the regs which prevailed prior to the New York and OKC 
disasters were adequate for their time, but now must be changed because 
the attitude in this country has become meaner and the precedent for big 
bombs or other big horrors has been set. I don't have any answers, but I 
am studying the problem as best I can, hoping to be able to contribute 
something to the effort to prevent future horrors.


Jerry  

Subject: Re: Lawsuit against fertilizer mfr (Okl city bombing)
From: glhurst@onr.com (Gerald L. Hurst) 
Date: May 19 1995
Newsgroups: misc.legal,sci.chem

In article <cvxdrk-1905951254560001@165.249.8.33>, cvxdrk@arco.com (David 
R. Kinney) says:

>There IS a process (patented some 20 years ago) for the addition of
>ammonium phosphate to ammonium nitrate fertilizer that renders the
>fertilizer ineffective as an explosive.  Additional cost is minimal, but
>ANY additional cost was deemed to be too much by the manufacturers.  See
>the Philadelphia Inquirer (5/19/95?) for a good profile of the patent
>holders and their story.

The following is a copy of relevant material I posted in 
alt.engr.explosives and misc.legal: 

>>In article <3ph10u$lo@stratus.skypoint.net>, jlogajan@skypoint.com (John
>>Logajan) says:
>
>>They just had on Jeraldo CNBC show an inventor of a 1962 patent process
>>Apparently his process is to mix diammonium phosphate with the ammonium 
>>nitrate.
>
>>The question is, is it hard to extract the diammonium phosphate from
>>the ammonium nitrate by some means, such as a differential soluability
>>or other fairly simple chemical "cleansing"?

I believe the inventor you're referring to was an engineer named Samuel
Porter and the patent was issued in 1968. Mr. Colbert was an engineer who
later joined Mr. Porter and helped him pitch his idea of diluting AN with
DAP, an already well-known fire retardent and fertilizer.  It appears that
similar mixtures were already in use, mainly overseas, where they use more
DAP fertilizer than we do, perhaps because of our calcium phosphate
technology based on work by the TVA with the calcium salts.  Aqueous
mixtures of AN/DAP are often found in home-gardener liqid fertilizers
along with a potassium salt and some green dye.  Presumably, this "prior
art" interfered with broad coverage of the system in the Porter patent
because the claim language vaguely alludes to the necessity of intimately
mixing the materials by co-crystallization and/or what-have-you.

Most of the tests of the mixtures were with fire, and the DAP did what it
had long done for paper, etc - it retarded the fire.  It might be pointed
out that trying to burn ANFO isn't that easy anyway.  In practice, when
you light a bunch of paper under the stuff, it goes out nearly as soon as
the paper has burned away.

The explosive tests were conducted in two series: the first with #8
blasting caps, and the second with the same plus a two feet of 50 grain
detonating cord cut into 2-inch pieces and taped around the cap. These
initiators were used  to set off about three-pound charges in half-gallon
cylindrical ice-cream containers about 4" in diameter and 10" long.

Rather than using witness plates, the Dautriche method or electronic
instrumentation they relied on a "tell-tale" consisting of a fifteen foot
length of detonating cord with one end contacting a piece of steel and the
other terminating in a crimped #6 fuse cap. The fuse cap was inserted in
the distal end of the charge with respect to the #8 detonator.

From a series of shots using the above arrangement they obtained results
which they classified as H.O. (high order), L.O. (low order) and N.D. (no
detonation).  The treated material was reported to show no results greater
than L.O. and mostly N.D., while the "regular" ANFO gave H.O. results
every time.

It should be mentioned that the ANFO and the treated ANFO used in these
experiments was not actually in the form of prills but rather a powder
with about 30% passing through a 35 mesh screen.

One might also note that the ammonium phosphate may actually have been the
monobasic material because of the thermal loss of one ammonia group during
hot processing steps.

Please do not interpret my description of this work as either praise or
criticism.  I am supposed to be an expert in this field and that means
that I must study the subject objectively and carefully before I form any
firm opinions.  I would, however, welcome any comments from those who do
have thoughts on the matter

As to the question of whether or not one could readily separate the AN
from the mixture, the answer is "Yes."  It is a personal quirk of mine to
hesitate in giving instructions that might lead a youngster to try
something he shouldn't.  Probably any young chemist reading this forum
will instantly realize how very easy the separation would be, but it'll
make me squint to see it in print.

Jerry

Subject: Re: Lawsuit against fertilizer mfr (Okl city bombing)
From: glhurst@onr.com (Gerald L. Hurst) 
Date: May 20 1995
Newsgroups: misc.legal

In article <3pjt8f$iuv@netaxs.com>, turner7@pacsibm.org (Lee Winson) says:

>I appreciate the various comments people have posted to this question.
>I agree with Ira's post especially.
>
>Apparently there was a product invented quite some time ago to reduce
>the explosive nature of fertilizer, the Phila Inqr did a big story on
>it.  The paper said the patent has expired and is in public domain.
>
>I don't know how much the additive product would cost nor if it would
>reduce the effectiveness of the fertilizer or change its properties.
> (Would farmers need more weight to get the same nutrient?)

I've noted a tendency for attorneys in this forum to more or less accept
as a fact that the there is a patent which provides a practical solution 
to the problem of terroristic use of AN as an explosive precursor.  When a 
laymen tries to practice a little law or join in legal discussions with
a bunch of lawyers, he sometimes appears a bit dim because of lack of 
education and experience.  So it is also when a group of attorneys and the 
PA Enquirer try to ascertain the merit of a patent being hyped by an eager 
plaintiff's lawyer and a failed inventor.  Have any of you considered the 
possibility that the bomb problem is more a matter of the availability of 
information than the accessibility of chemicals?  

AN was around and available for many decades before people became 
generally aware of the ease with which ANFO could be made and shot.  It 
wasn't so much a matter of someone discovering the material as it was 
winning over the minds of powder companies and their customers.

Supposing tomorrow pure AN disappears from the market and is replaced by 
the above invention. Then day after tomorrow someone publishes on the net 
a simple recipe for using the new product to produce a bomb.  Ah, but we 
heard on the telly and read in the paper that this can't be done.  We know 
this must be true because the inventor is said to have said so.

There is, of course the small problem that the inventor may have been 
neither a chemist nor an explosives expert and he may simply not realize 
what any young chemist could figure out in 5 minutes.  As to the 
explosives expertise of the inventor, it might be noted that he tested his 
untreated "ANFO" with a number 8 blasting cap and it reportedly shot "high 
order" whereas his treated material failed to detonate.  The rub here is 
that ordinary commercial ANFO is not cap-sensitive.

As lawyers use the term, I am an "expert" in the field of ammonium nitrate 
based explosives.  Although I would be the last to say that you can't 
desensitize AN, I would point out that there is a price to pay.  Tell us 
how hard we should make it for terrorists to make a bomb and we'll figure 
out how much more it will cost you to buy vegetables.

>Unless someone can tell me otherwise, I still believe the Okl City bomb
>took a lot of work and technical know-how, not just randomly mixing junk
>together and loading barrels in a truck.  I doubt the typical fertilizer
>purchaser has this expertise.

Unfortunately, little skill, money or time was required to put together a 
5,000 lb bomb.  It is simply a matter of having the right information. For 
instance, I had a patent (now public domain) which described a method of 
rendering simple AN mixtures cap-sensitive.  The information exists, but 
is not likely to be disseminated. 

>They've added a foul smell to Liquid Paper because some kids were
>sniffing it to get high.  I can't stand the new smell, but I must suffer
>with it on account of some dumb kids.  I don't think that's Liquid
>Paper's responsibility.

Sorry to hear about Liquid Paper.  By coincidence I happen to have been 
the fellow who (as a consultant) developed the new formulations for the 
company just prior to their corporate acquisition by Gilette.  I spent a 
lot of time making the formulas fire-proof and as non-toxic as possible, 
but there was no way to avoid the soporific effect of deliberate 
inhalation. I hate seeing a good system corrupted by a deliberately added 
foul odor.

Shades of product liability. When I first invented and patented the 
so-called "Mylar" (duPont trademark) metallized balloon, my early 
distributors couldn't get product liability insurance at first because an 
insurance company (lawyer?) figured people would mistake the round silver 
balloons for seatcushions, and that injuries would result when someone 
took a seat and burst the balloon.  Eventually, we made the seams strong 
enough to support over two hundred pounds.

Any comments re lawyers are not to be taken too seriously; my youngest son 
is one.

Jerry

Subject: Re: Lawsuit against fertilizer mfr (Okl city bombing)
From: glhurst@onr.com (Gerald L. Hurst) 
Date: May 21 1995
Newsgroups: misc.legal

In article <3po3ro$cfd@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>, eking@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu 
(Elizabeth C King) says:

>        Jerry has made some very good points on how expensive tort 
>liability can be for manufacturers.  Jerry seems to forget that there is 
>a reasonableness standard with products liability.  Manufacturers are 
>required to only do what is reasonable for their situation.

"Reasonable" often turns out to be "Arbitrary."  Technical solutions to 
real problems are often more difficult for the scientists who solve them 
than for the lawyers who propose them. Tort liability is expensive, all 
right, but it is the consumer who foots the bill, not the manufacturer.
Prices and profits are largely based on factors derived from the total 
cost of manufacturing.

>Everyone appears to believe that it is unreasonable to require fertilizer 
>manufacturers to safeguard their products.  If it really is true that the 
>safeguarding would be an unreasonable requirement, then I'm sure the 
>point will be made in court.

Who is this "everyone" you're writing about?  What safe-guards are you 
talking about? Somebody said they had a patent which would remedy the 
situation and you figure it must be true or you believe, at least, that 
"they" can solve the problem if they wish to.  Mere engineering details.

>I do, however, believe that the bombing victims would not have gotten the 
>quality of lawyer that they have if there weren't some facts to show that 
>the manufacturer should have done something.  In either case, it truly is 
>a question for the jury and I don't know why so many pro-business types 
>are scared to let the judicial marketplace play its role.  

Hmm, I've been watching J. Cochran tell the jury that O.J's blood was 
planted through police conspiracy.  It should be interesting to hear the 
plaintiff's theory in the OKC case.  If you really wonder why anyone would 
worry about decisions made in the "judicial marketplace," I'd judge you've 
not yet had much courtroom experience in product liability cases.

The question of how we regulate the AN market in the future is a valid 
one.  We will have to make some decisions based on our very, very limited 
knowledge of the consequences.  Whether we should hold a manufacturer 
responsible for the OKC bombing is an entirely different question.

But, please don't tell me that there is a relationship between the merits 
of the case and eagerness with which it is pursued by well-known lawyers. 
When was the last time you saw a major disaster, including earthquakes, 
which didn't attract eager advocates

BTW, I am not a "business type." Never had enough brains for that kind of 
work.

Jerry

Subject: Re: Lawsuit against fertilizer mfr (Okl city bombing)
From: glhurst@onr.com (Gerald L. Hurst) 
Date: May 21 1995
Newsgroups: misc.legal

In article <3pnnmh$f2v@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>, eking@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu 
(Elizabeth C King) says:

>But, that is not the question.  If shell knew of an efficient way to make 
>the gas bomb proof and they knew that this would save lives, then they 
>might be required to make the safeguards.  Since gas, to my knowledge, 
>cannot be gas without being dangerous, there is no liability.  Something 
>tells me, however, that fertilizer can still be fertilizer without being 
>dangerous.

But gas only has to be gas because you don't want to drive a diesel and 
use a fuel with a much safer flashpoint (140 deg F or higher vs -40). 
Electricity could be made very much safer if we all used DC converters or 
lower voltage or a lower frequency. After all, Europeans run their 
appliances on 50 cycle current, why shouldn't we.  Why do we still use 
oil-base paints instead of latex in the presence of the ever-present 
danger of spontaneoue combustion and other fires? If manufacturers would 
simply precut our meat into bite-size chunks, we could dispense with 
knives around the house, except for plastic ones to spread our reduced fat 
peanut butter.

Fertilizer can certainly be made less dangerous.  Simply stop 
manufacturing millions of tons of ammonium nitrate. The vacuum created in 
the market place will eventually be filled by such materials as urea and 
ammonia and, after a few decades, we'll hardly notice the difference 
except in the cost of food. The absence of ammonium nitrate will be a 
terrible inconvenience to terrorists - they'll have to switch to other 
materials, too.  Naturally, the cost of explosive grade AN will rise and 
push up the cost of road construction, etc.  Explosives companies, in the 
long run, will be pleased because they never wanted to see AN used as a 
blasting agent.  It was their customers, the mines and quarries, who 
insisted on using that overly economical stuff.  Making AN more expensive 
will increase sales of dynamite-type materials, which will increase the 
probability of accidental explosions, but terrorists will have to steal 
the materials or at least lie when they buy them.

Of course, we could simply compromise by diluting AN with an inert 
material and insist that farmers put that mix on their crops whether they 
need the second ingredient or not.  This would stymie the terrorists until 
sometime next week when some eager young chemistry student would post a 
convenient recipe for making a bomb from the new material. 

Jerry

Subject: Re: Lawsuit against fertilizer mfr (Okl city bombing)
From: glhurst@onr.com (Gerald L. Hurst) 
Date: May 23 1995
Newsgroups: misc.legal

In article <znr801241777k@execinet>, cboldt@earth (Chuck Seyboldt) says:

>        I agree with you, it does not have the utility that you
>implied ... "This process renders AN to a form that is explosion
>proof, and furthermore this process cannot be easily reversed.
>Once AN is bound up in my invention, it is very difficult (or
>dangerous or expensive) to extract it to a form that is explosive."
>
>        Perhaps the patent was written to make the product safer, to

Although my present copy of the patent is a real eye strainer, I do not 
believe it contains the phrase you have quoted.  Can you tell us the 
origin of the quote? It sounds like something said long after the fact for 
publicity, perhaps.  "Reversing the process" would hardly be difficult, 
dangerous, or expensive.  The patent was clearly primarily aimed at 
rendering AN less sensitive to large-scale combustion.  The testing of 
process' ability to desensitize ANFO to initiation by primer charges was 
not adequate as described by the examples listed in the patent, but it was 
enough for the talk shows.

Small scale fire testing is nearly useless.  There are AN based high 
explosives which are really tough to burn, but they will blow a hole 
through a metal plate with a #8 cap.  If a fire breaks out in a shipload 
of treated AN, take my advice and split.

Until I have had the opportunity to test this technology properly, I can't 
categorically state that it has little utility, but .... grumble, grumble, 
if I were a betting man.....  I hope to have the opportunity to put the 
process through the testing mill.  If it works as well as promoted, I'll 
join the choir and sing it's praises.

Jerry

Subject: Re: Lawsuit against fertilizer mfr (Okl city bombing)
From: glhurst@onr.com (Gerald L. Hurst) 
Date: May 23 1995
Newsgroups: misc.legal

In article <3prvo5$io4@ix.cs.uoregon.edu>, bretwood@cs.uoregon.edu
(Joseph Bret Wood) says:

>If a patent was granted for a process to deactivate ammonium nitrate so that
>it couldn't be used to make explosives, then I would assume one requirement
>would be that the process is not easily circumvented.  If the AN derivative
>or mixture could be easily modified into an explosive ingredient, then
>the patent would have no utility, because it wouldn't stop people from 
>making bombs with AN.  In that case, the patent office wouldn't have granted
>a patent (I assume).  If the patent office chemists were unable to see a
>way around the deactivation of AN, then I doubt some high school chemist,
>or undereducated terrorist would be able to do it.

Sorry for the overkill in the following post. It was intended as 
an answer to a posting by Mr. wood in misc.legal.moderated, but that 
document has disappeared from my newsreader so I'm posting it here for
its limited value in discussing the role of patents: 

The following dialogue is a bit lengthy, but possibly of interest to a few
who will be following the progress of the OKC lawsuit.  Jerry  (moi) 
opened the exchange with a few technical comments and touch of 
apparent braggadoccio, presenting himself as some kind of self-styled 
expert.  Mr. Wood (who is actually a  "former" chemist) has kindly stepped 
into the role of colleague opponent, questioning the witness' credentials 
and credibility.  The discourse centers around the potential efficacy of the
Porter patent which has been touted as a viable  method of desensitizing AN.

In article <3pqalf$qo3@ix.cs.uoregon.edu>, 
bretwood@cs.uoregon.edu (Joseph Bret Wood) says:

>In article <3pk9rg$6q9@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>,
>Gerald L. Hurst <glhurst@onr.com> wrote:
>
>>AN was around and available for many decades before people became 
>>generally aware of the ease with which ANFO could be made and shot.  It 
>>wasn't so much a matter of someone discovering the material as it was 
>>winning over the minds of powder companies and their customers.
>>
>>Supposing tomorrow pure AN disappears from the market and is replaced by 
>>the above invention. Then day after tomorrow someone publishes on the net 
>>a simple recipe for using the new product to produce a bomb.  Ah, but we 
>>heard on the telly and read in the paper that this can't be done.  We know 
>>this must be true because the inventor is said to have said so.
>
>Actually, it has been mentioned many times that a patent was awarded for
>this process/additive.  (I'm not sure of the details)  I realize that a patent
>doesn't guarentee the process is foolproof, but it should mean that it has 
>been reviewed by the US Patent Office.  And since chemistry is one of the
>largest areas of patent law, I would suppose that the office has LOTS of
>chemists qualified to evaluate the procedure.

'Lil Abner Yokum and you are probably among the few who share this rather 
rosey view of this particular branch of the civil service.  If patent examiners
were really highly technically qualified, they would be writing patent 
applications, not reading them.  Patent examiners generally are attorneys 
with modest technical training.  Their responsibility is not to concern 
themselves with the viability of an invention but merely to determine its 
acceptability in terms of novelty.  They ask only if the concept is "obvious
to one of ordinary skill in the art,"  or "anticipated" by prior known work or
"a mere combination of known elements."  Except in the case of a few ideas
like perpetual motion, they leave it up to the marketplace to decide if 
something works.

My tentative analysis of the patent claims indicates that the P.O.  
apparently limited the scope of the patent to some rather fuzzy claims for
specific methods of intimate blending of the two ingredients such as 
co-crystallization, wet mixing and fusion of mixtures of AN and DAP 
(diammonium phosphate].  It could hardly have granted broader 
coverage of the compositions per se, because DAP has long been known
as a fire-retarding ingredient in other media, and premixed fertilizers of
similar composition have been on the world market since before the 
inventors were born.

I am certainly no patent lawyer, but I have a bit of experience from a decade
litigation dealing with my own patents and my work as consultant and
expert witness in other patent cases involving disputes of major companies
over AN explosives technology. 

>>There is, of course the small problem that the inventor may have been 
>>neither a chemist nor an explosives expert and he may simply not realize 
>>what any young chemist could figure out in 5 minutes.
>
>The inventor was a chemical engineer with significant experience in 
>nitrogen chemistry.  I believe this has been mentioned also.

He may well have been a Chem. E., but that hardly qualifies him as either
a chemist or an explosives expert.  "Experience in nitrogen chemistry " is
a pretty vague concept. You might as well be referring to my early work
in developing the synthesis of sys- and trans-N2F2 or my discovery of
C2N2F4  (an explosive 4-membered ring ], both very [yawn] interesting
but irrevelant to AN properties.

>>As to the explosives expertise of the inventor, it might be noted that he 
>>tested his untreated "ANFO" with a number 8 blasting cap and it reportedly 
>>shot "high order" whereas his treated material failed to detonate.  The rub 
>>here is  that ordinary commercial ANFO is not cap-sensitive.
>
>"Commercial ANFO?"  ANFO stands for Ammonium Nitrate -- Fuel Oil.  I didn't
>know that anyone sold ANFO commercially.  Perhaps you have ANFO and 
>Ammonium Nitrate confused.  Otherwise, I would be interrested to have the 
>reference for your information.  I do know that just dumping a bunch of fuel 
>oil into a barrel of ammonium nitrate won't make an ANFO bomb, but I would 
>assume that the control in the experiment was properly prepared.

I am aware of the difference between AN and ANFO.  Remember I'm the guy
who claims a degree of expertise in this area.  As a matter of fact, many
millions of pounds of ANFO are sold in premixed 50 lb bags and more
millions are delivered as premixed product to the bore holes in mix
trucks which are barely distinguishable from cement trucks.  You will
probably be displeased to learn that one can, indeed, prepare ANFO by
just pouring the oil in.  It is a poor practice, but frequently an
operator will merely slit open a 50 lb bag of prills, pour oil in and
wait for capillary action to do the mixing.  BTW, my old patented
invention, the 2-component high explosive, Kinepak, specifically relied
on the same method for mixing.

A reference for the existance of commercial mixed ANFO, eh?  OK, how
about duPont's Blasters' Handbook, fifteenth edition, page 62.

>>As lawyers use the term, I am an "expert" in the field of ammonium nitrate 
>>based explosives.
>>
>>Sorry to hear about Liquid Paper.  By coincidence I happen to have been 
>>the fellow who (as a consultant) developed the new formulations for the 
>>company just prior to their corporate acquisition by Gilette.  I spent a 
>>lot of time making the formulas fire-proof and as non-toxic as possible, 
>>but there was no way to avoid the soporific effect of deliberate 
>>inhalation. I hate seeing a good system corrupted by a deliberately added 
>>foul odor.
>>
>>Shades of product liability. When I first invented and patented the 
>>so-called "Mylar" (duPont trademark) metallized balloon, my early 
>>distributors couldn't get product liability insurance at first because an 
>>insurance company (lawyer?) figured people would mistake the round silver 
>>balloons for seatcushions, and that injuries would result when someone 
>>took a seat and burst the balloon.  Eventually, we made the seams strong 
>>enough to support over two hundred pounds.
>
>Hmmmmm, as a chemist myself, I am rather surprised at the incredible diversity
>of your expertise.  Work on explosives, materials, and commercial solvents
>creates quite the diverse reseme.  Especially considering that you didn't 
>just work in the research groups for DuPont, or Gillette, but you actually
>invented and patented mylar, and you "were the fellow who developed the new
>formulations" for liquid paper. 
.........................................................................

Your surprise is greatly appreciated (blush).  But slow down and reread that
paragraph. The invention was a balloon, not "Mylar."  The latter is a
trademark for a series of polyester film products made by duPont.  They are
very similar to laminated products first invented by 3-M in the sixties.
Because the duPont product was often given a reflective surface, folks
mistook the metallized biaxially oriented polyamide film of my balloons for
that material and thus coined the misnomer "Mylar balloon."  Apologies to
duPont.  My patent is based on the buoyant longevity imparted by a
continuous coating of about a millionth of an inch of vacuum-deposited
aluminum.  It is this extended floating life that permits them to be sold in
regular commercial outlets.  Unit sales of licensed product and unauthorized
clones passed the billion mark before the patent expired last March.
(Sigh|).  

Surprisingly, there was only one serious product liability lawsuit involving
the balloons.  A loose cluster of them allegedly shorted and burned down a
power line.  The line landed on a parked car, and the owner was electrocuted
when he tried to sweep the line away with a broom.  Apparently the balloon 
is statistically less dangeous than McDonald's coffee.  Patent infringement
lawsuits were a different matter.  These lasted for ten years or more and
consumed millions of dollars.

As for Liquid Paper, I did my formulation work for them prior to their 
acquisition.  Actually, I developed both their water-based product for photo-
copies and the solvent-based version for type.  The work had the
beneficial spin-off of the Pen-n-Ink version which can handle ballpoint
ink without bleeding.  May I never have to blend and test another batch.
I can assure you that avoiding potential product liability lawsuits played
a major role in the selection of ingredients.

Balloons and type correction fluids are a bit far from the subject  of AN 
explosives - pardon the drifting.

>..................................As for your mention of your patent on a 
>process to make a simple ammonium nitrate mixture explosive, you said that
>it would not be widely disseminated.....  Why not?  Either you described the
>process in sufficient detail to duplicate it in the patent, in which case
>anyone who read your post can easily get the info now, or you didn't describe
>the process in sufficient detail, in which case it wouldn't be disseminated
>at all......

"Either or" is a bit limiting.  You are quite right that anyone can look up
my old patent(s) and read them.  All it takes is a little trip to a good
engineering library and a few coins worth of copies from the microfilm
reader.  You can get not only my patents, but hundreds of others on related
topics.  But with rare exception, it's not going to happen.  Look at this
forum. Lots of relatively well-educated people are busy discussing the
"Ammonium Nitrate Desensitization" patent, but who, other than myself, has
actually read it.  The vast majority of people prefer speculation to
investigation.  

>-Bret Wood
>-An ex-chemist training to be a scientific computer consultant
>-email: bretwood@cs.uoregon.edu

Chemistry and the like are not everybody's cup of miso.

Jerry , AKA Gerald L. Hurst, Ph.D. (Cantab.)  

Subject: Re: OK Bombing tort suit STOP THE ABSURDITY
From: glhurst@onr.com (Gerald L. Hurst) 
Date: Jun 01 1995
Newsgroups: misc.legal

In article <3qk7ig$3r0@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>, eking@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu 
(Elizabeth C King) says:

>In article <3qjuib$o5v@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>,
>Gerald L. Hurst <glhurst@onr.com> wrote:
>>In article <3qjep5$knf@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>, eking@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
>>(Elizabeth C King) says:
>>>If this is truly a baseless claim, then they shouldn't have a problem
>>>hiring a lawyer to file a motion to dismiss.  Should cost about a
>>>thousand dollars.  If there is an issue that they might have been able to
>>>prevent the bombing by acting prudently, then they might have to pay a
>>>little bit more.
>>
>>My, my that is a rosy picture of justice.  Issues don't "exist," they are
>>created by attorneys.  If 100 people were killed by a meteor strike there
>>would still be a lawsuit against someone.
>
>Nice hyperbole.  Then, how come Ryder isn't being sued?

Good thinking.  Ryder looks like a candidate to be joined later so that
they can settle out of court for a few hundred thousand to avoid the
enormous legal expense of a prolonged trial.

>>>>We know NOW someone can take it and make a bomb.  (Note the writer
>>>>mentioned it had to be detonated with dynamite, which is not a household
>>>>item, not accessible off the counter, which I think is quite significant
>>>>as to "misuse".)  Maybe now the fertilizer companies should look into
>>>>neutrailizing.  But until this happened, how could they have forseen it?
>>>
>>>You said, "I don't understand how knowing the fertilizer was
>>>explosive..."  Your query assumes that there was knowledge of it being
>>>explosive.  So, maybe when the fertlizer companies knew (as it appears
>>>you believe happened a while ago) that the fertilizer can be used as
>>>explosives, they should have looked into neutralizing it.
>>
>>Why is there any question about knowledge in the ammonium nitrate
>>fertilizer industry concerning the use of the material as an explosive?
>>Of course they know about these things. Take three guesses at the name of
>>the largest explosives company in the world.
>>
>>Much of the "what if" conversations in this forum seem to require the
>>absence of knowledge concerning the underlying undisputed facts.
>>
>>Let me state a few highly probable propositions:
>>
>>1. Fertilizer companies know more about the use of AN in explosives than
>>any other organizations except for some government agencies such as Bu
>>Mines.
>
>EXACTLY, this is why the onus is on the fertlizer companies to do the
>reasonable thing.  They are in the best position to determine whether or
>not it is reasonable to safeguard the product.

Yes, but before the fact, the fertilizer companies must guess at what
safeguards are reasonable.  After the fact, only judge and jury can
decide what was reasonable in the clear light of hindsight which
factors in the actions of fanatics and madmen in the 1990s.

If the company had added phosphate to the fertilizer and someone with
my knowledge had used it to make an explosive, they would still be in
court and the question of reasonable precautions would still be the
same. In the meantime they would have been under attack by the
environmentalists for pollution and its consequences.

Measures and countermeasures are an ongoing cat and mouse
game that will not end.  No one can say about any industry that their
safety precautions are adequate to prevent misuse of their product by
people determined to do so.  Misuse of a product may be construed
as de facto evidence that the precautions were not adequate.

It may be noted by some more cynical than I, that the lawsuit arises
not from the fact that an AN bomb was used to kill, but that it was
used to kill so many this time.  The case is obviously a potential
legal diamond mine and path to fame.

If I seem to be favoring the defendant, think again.  The questions
raised by a disaster of such magnitude deserve careful study, not a pat
answer, even if the answer is based on long experience.  I am however
suggesting that you move, at least temporarily, a little closer to the
middle of the controversy for a better view.  The perspective is aided by
the elimination of speculation based on hollow premises.

>>2. The much-vaunted desensitized AN patent calls for the addition of 10
>>percent diammonium phosphate.  If we're going to throw a billion pounds
>>of soluble phosphate on the ground we might as well go back to phosphate
>>detergents.
>
>So, you are saying that it is absolutely unreasonable to use this method
>to safeguard the fertilizer.  Fine, no problem, they will win in court.

I sincerely wish that some cross-examining attorney would use a line
like that on me in court.  "Absolutely unreasonable"  is your phrase, not
mine. I do not claim to know anything about absolutes.  There is no 
etched bar of platinum in the bureau of standards which can be used as 
measure of reasonableness.  Who wins in court will be largely a matter of 
who appears to be more credible.  If there were some obvious "truth" which 
could be pulled out of a hat to dazzle the court, the upcoming trial would 
not cost nearly so much nor last nearly so long as it is going to.

>>3. I and lots of other people could make a perfectly functional explosive
>>from the desensitized material by methods anybody could use with a few
>>instructions.
>>
>>4. If you ban AN completely and by some miracle are able to live without
>>it without severe problems, I and lots of other people can show you how to
>>make explosives without it.
>
>If there are severe problems associated with safeguarding the
>product, then this is an abslolutely good defense to the lawsuit.

It is A defense, but hardly an absolutely good (or bad) one.

>>5. The desentization patent does not present any credible evidence that
>>that desensitized material would not have done essentially the same damage
>>that the untreated material did.  Much of the description of the proposed
>>process in the media is based on hearsay.
>
>Once again, if all you say is true, the fertilizer company has nothing to
>worry about.

What I have said is technically true, but that hardly leaves the company
with nothing to worry about.  Being sued is a serious business in which it
is HELPFUL to be innocent of wrongdoing.

>>6. There will be no economic free ride in modifying AN to make it safer.
>>The more you are willing to pay directly or indirectly, the safer it can
>>be made.
>
>Same.

"Same" ?  Terse but apparently meaningless.

>>The regulatory agencies such as Bu railroads, DOT, BATF, FBI, OSHA, MESA
>>and scads of state and local fire marshals, etc. are and have been for
>>many decades aware of the explosive properties of AN, and they have always
>>been aware that an incident like that in OKC was possible.
>
>Unfortunately, government agencies are not the best at determining
>whether products are unreasonably safe.  Take tobacco for one.

I had the impression that the surgeon general dissaproved of smoking and 
that there were increasing numbers of anti-smoking ordinances.  It seems 
to be generally accepted that the government is not best at much of 
anything but taxation. Perhaps that's why we use lawyers to settle these 
things.

>>I am an independent expert on explosives, including AN explosives. One of
>>my first cases as an expert witness was an ANFO bombing/murder in the
>>Western District of Oklahoma in about 1972.  The problem we are facing is
>>a complex one that probably does not have a simple technical answer, It
>>may be that the regs which prevailed prior to the New York and OKC
>>disasters were adequate for their time, but now must be changed because
>>the attitude in this country has become meaner and the precedent for big
>>bombs or other big horrors has been set. I don't have any answers, but I
>>am studying the problem as best I can, hoping to be able to contribute
>>something to the effort to prevent future horrors.
>
>All of your worries are taken care of by the law.

I'm sure this must have profound connotations for the legally-trained 
mind, but I am only a simple chemist who gets to watch the unfolding of 
cases when "the rule" has not been invoked.  Alas, about the law, I only 
know what I read in the newsgroups.

Jerry