Legal Problems
Many of Lawson's patents were not as defining as he had hoped, and from 1901 a series of legal cases saw the value in his holdings eroded. Lawson's patent rights were subsequently eroded through successful lawsuits by the Automobile Mutual Protective Association. In 1904 Lawson was tried in court for fraudulently obtaining money from his shareholders and, after representing himself in court, he was found guilty and sentenced to one year's hard labour.
Lawson was completely out of the automobile industry by 1908 and disappeared from the public gaze for some years.
He reappeared as a director of the Blériot Manufacturing Aircraft Company Ltd., the English branch of Louis Blériot's aircraft company. Lawson secretly acquired control of the company just before a public subscription to help expand its war effort. But the company soon found itself in breach of its contract with Blériot. When this came to light, the company was wound up and its director found guilty of fraud and dishonesty.
He retired from the public gaze and died at his home in Harrow, London in 1925.
Read more about this topic: Harry John Lawson
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or problems:
“It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate was left to the legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have no faith that justice will be awarded in such a case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The truth of the thoughts that are here set forth seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. And if I am not mistaken in this belief, then the second thing in which the value of this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)