Memoirs - Stories from a Life Enjoyed Living

Book excerpt: Jim Davis, through stories of his remarkable career as U.S. Naval officer, international trial lawyer and Federal trial judge, provides rare insight and humor to exotic happenings on the high seas and in America’s courtrooms. All stems from his improbable youthful achievements . . . appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy faculty at age 23 and to the Federal bench in Washington, D.C. at age 32, youngest ever to the U.S. Court of Claims. He tells of chasing Soviet nuclear submarines from New York to the North Sea, learning the Navy’s ways while working with fellow-officer Ross Perot (America’s computer wunderkind in the late 1950s), navigating the St. Lawrence seaway in 1957 on an aircraft carrier, the first and largest ship to do so, and entering Havana, Cuba in 1957 under threat of Castro’s expanding revolution. In the courtroom, he tangled with the CIA over recovery of a Soviet submarine from the Pacific Ocean floor, prevented China from exporting illegally millions of TV sets to the U.S. after stealing U.S. patents, protected Texas Instruments’ multi-billion dollar position in computer chip production from invasion by Japan and Korea, and thwarted piracy by Mexican and Chinese pirates of National Geographic Society’s world famous yellow-bordered Geographic magazine. As trial judge, he decided a $211 million patent case, second largest in U.S. history, and decided what Time Magazine called the “most significant copyright case of the 20th century,” copyright’s struggle with the Xerox machine. And much more. A great read!