Payback

 

Instant Karma ( We All Shine On)

Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin'
Join the human race
How in the world you gonna see
Laughin' at fools like me
Who in the hell do you think you are
A super star
Well, right you are

Sometimes Karma ain’t so instant, but it’s still there.

Having said that I don’t believe in certification, https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2024/06/ethics.html, then why do I have a Professional Engineering, PE, certification? It all goes back to 1987. I had written a computer program which was used to compute the performance of an intersection. That program was being used by a town to deny a zoning change to property owners.  In my opinion the town's consultant, who was using the program, had operated it improperly. I let the town know that. I was called as an expert witness for the town’s side in a court case concerning their decision. I expected that my opinion was going to be heard at that time. Instead the town’s attorney asked me one, and only one, question on the stand, “Was I a Professional Engineer?” At the time I was not, so I answered no. I was immediately dismissed from the stand with no further questions. The consultant, whom I thought operated my program improperly, WAS a Professional Engineer, as was established by the first question in his testimony. All of his further calculations were then believed, while mine was not even heard. Needless to say the very first thing I did upon returning home was to start the process of getting my own Professional Engineering license.

Almost 20 years later, I was advising a client in a court case where this same PE in that previous case was on the opposing side. I pointed out to my client’s lawyers a basic mistake which had been made in his report. It was that he averaged averages. It sounds esoteric, but it is not. For example, if  a husband works for a non-profit and has a salary of $40K per year, while his wife works in private practice and has a salary of $200K per year,  then the household has a combined salary of $240 K per year. If the husband gets a 100% pay increase to $80K per year while the wife receives  a 0% pay increase the household does NOT have a 50% increase, the average of those percentage increases. That would mean that the household salary would be  $330 K per year, while in reality it was only $80K plus $200K, or $280 K per year, an increase of only 17%. And that is why you don’t average averages. The consultant had used this error to compute the future growth in traffic at an intersection by averaging the growth in low traffic counts with the growth in high traffic counts and then applying that average to all traffic counts.

When I pointed this error to my client’s attorney, he was overjoyed. When the opposing PE was sworn in on the stand, that lawyer asked about this, and my example was used. My client’s attorney then moved to strike the consultant’s entire report  as inadmissible evidence and the judge concurred. Thus while not even taking the stand, and it had taken 20 years to get there, it felt as if Karma had paid me back.