Opinion ID: 1612232
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 20

Heading: Dr. Stanley Watson

Text: Dr. Stanley Watson, who has a doctorate in agronomy, testified that he had developed a short steep system for corn wet milling and had obtained a patent on the process in 1969. He viewed the Sutherland plant in November 1997 and observed that the equipment and short steep process at the plant were similar to that which he had designed. In his opinion, the short steep process at the Sutherland plant would work, but he acknowledged that the only way to determine this with absolute certainty would be to commence operation of the plant. On crossexamination, Watson admitted that the short steep process has never been used in a commercial operation. He acknowledged a statement in a pretrial deposition that the short steep process would be speculative on a commercial scale, but insisted that this meant only that one could not be absolutely certain that the process would work at the Sutherland plant without attempting operation.