Goss' 18-Year-Old Lawsuit Finally Settled

By: Mark Fitzgerald After 18 years in Chicago federal court, Case No. 84C6746, Goss Graphics Systems Inc. v. DEV Industries Inc., has been settled.

The newspaper industry's own version of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the endless lawsuit at the center of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, is ending with a whimper after beginning with a bang. Goss accused several former employees of marketing clones of its hugely successful Community printing press by stealing drawings of the singlewide machine (E&P, Sept. 16).

Details of the settlement -- to be formally presented Wednesday to U.S. District Judge William J. Hibbler -- are secret, and the former litigants aren't saying much. "We're just being very low-key about it," said David Stamp, director of marketing for Goss International.

In the course of the litigation, the original defendant corporation, DEV, went into bankruptcy liquidation, and Goss itself went in and out of two prepackaged bankruptcy reorganizations and changed its name three times -- and, as Ronald Peterson, a trustee for a DEV creditor remarked recently, "This litigation will put more lawyers' kids through medical school than I care to think about."

Said Goss attorney Michael Warnecke of the case that was overseen by four trial judges and went to appellate courts three times: "We're happy it's finally over with -- and I'm sure the courts are happy it's over with, too."