As Professor Kearns was driving home with his family one day it started to rain and he had to use his car wipers. The trouble was that in those days windscreen wipers were not automatic and were very cumbersome and inconveniencing to use.

This bothered Kearns, who had an obsession with the human eye ever since he popped the cork of a bottle of champagne into his eye on his wedding night and had to have emergency surgery. He was legally blind in that eye. That evening when he got home he had a moment of inspiration – why couldn’t windscreen wipers work like the human eye? Why couldn’t they blink?

So he got to work and eventually, with the help of his children, invented what we know today as the intermittent windshield wiper. The family had called it the “Kearns blinking eye windshield wiper.” The design allowed wipers to pause between swipes and enabled the driver to set the interval at which the wiper sweeps the window. What an example of pure genius and the power of the mind.

To cut a long story short, Kearns negotiated with the Ford motor corporation and they initially agreed to use his wipers and let him manufacture them in his own factory. Eventually, once their engineers had had a look at the design, they suddenly ditched Kearns and said they were not interested. Their real intention was to manufacture the wipers and claim the design as their own, which they did in grand style soon enough, leaving Kearns totally out of the picture.

What ensued was a long legal battle that took years and cost Kearns his marriage, his friends, his job and nearly his children. It made me think how doing the right thing may make you unpopular and even despised by a lot of people. Kearns lost many friends and even his closest companion, his wife, because he would not give up on his ideals. Taking the right stance in our modern day society, which is for the most part a conformist society that despises independent thinking and individuality can cost you a lot. It can cost you everything. But as the saying goes “if you do not stand for something you will fall for everything.” 

Professor Kearns certainly did not as he was an extremely stubborn man and would stop at nothing to claim his invention. He moved against the wind and did not listen to all the people that told him how big Ford was and that he didn’t stand a chance against them. He had one thing set in his mind. Justice. He believed in it and he believed you couldn’t place a monetary value on it.

He turned down various desperate offers from Ford to settle out of court. The first one was for 250,000 dollars and this changed to a million dollars. Then in the final days of the battle they sent someone to him with an offer for 30 million dollars. Unflinching in his conviction and realising that he had put his family through a lot; he asked his 6 children what they thought of the offer. They told the “messenger” that they would see him in court. Ford wanted to settle, but were unwilling to admit that they stole his invention. For the Kearns family it was a question of integrity and real justice, rather than just monetary gain.

The lesson here is that money is not a substitute for real values and integrity. When you are faced with a decision that requires you to make compromises on your values in exchange for money which way do you go? Is your decision based on your values or on the money you are getting? This is a decision that has to be made in advance because if left till the situation arises our nature is to move towards the money. However, if your values are strong enough to start with you are more likely to stick to them. Some coaching methodologies use values as an integral part of the coaching process and are useful for recognising and strengthening our values system.

Would you have declined a one million dollar offer let alone a 30 million offer had you been in the same situation? Frankly speaking, I probably would have settled at the one million dollars. But by the time the 30 million dollar offer came perhaps the Kearns had managed to convince me too and I was delighted at their decision to pursue it to the end. After all, they had already paid such a great price emotionally and mentally as a family.

Professor Kearns had stuck to his fight for a long time and through it he had instilled the right values in his children. This shows the importance of teaching our children to have the right values and understanding of life. Kearns took a stance that initially alienated even his own children. But over time they came to appreciate his stance and took on the same values, to the point of declining a 30 million dollar offer to sell out. Wow. That is simply amazing.

This principle goes for everyday situations as well.  Are you giving your children information about and teaching them the right values concerning sex, marriage, spirituality, friendship, alcohol and drug abuse, HIV and AIDS and so on? The family is the best place for them to learn. What they learn in the family setting has the greatest impact on them.

As the Bible says “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  The best way of training that child is by your own example, as well illustrated in the case of Professor Kearns. This is very important as these days a lot of parents think that once they send their children to school they have done their part. The rest is up to the teacher. This is a total neglect of responsibility as a parent and should not be the case.

The Kearns family won their case against Ford and were awarded over ten million dollars. They later sued Chrysler as well and were awarded over 18 million dollars in that case. The little guys can beat the big guys after all, against all odds. Professor Kearns died in 2005 at the age of 77, still pursuing other legal cases against vehicle manufacturers who had used his design.  

So the next time you are in your car, in a taxi or on a bus and it starts raining, remember Robert Kearns as you watch those wipers smoothly going to and fro. Remember the fight he fought and the ideals he stood for. Remember that not everyone has a price and that there is no price you can put on your integrity.