Richard J. Lane was left a paraplegic when the right rear tread and tire belt detached from the commercial van he was driving. Lane, who was 29 at the time, lost control of the Ford E250 van, which then rolled on an interstate outside Boston in 1994. He was ejected from the vehicle and left paralyzed from the waist down.

He sued tire maker Michelin, alleging a defect in the company's Uniroyal Laredo tire. The pretrial demand for settlement was $4.5 million, defense attorney Richard K. Hines said. The case hinged on whether the tire's construction was flawed, as the plaintiff contended, or whether, as the defense claimed, it failed due to previous damage that would have been detected with proper maintenance.

The case was the only defense verdict last year in a tire-tread and belt-detachment trial, Hines said, but its timing and venue initially appeared less than ideal for the defense. The trial followed widespread publicity about the Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone tire recall. Compounding the defense's task was the fact that the Enron scandal, which heightened many people's distrust of big business, was still fresh in jurors' minds.

The jury was drawn from the Cambridge, Mass., area, which is home to several universities and to well-educated and liberal residents. Hines confronted those potential stumbling blocks head-on, telling jurors at the very start of the trial, " 'We are not Enron. Nor are we Firestone.'

"If jurors sense you're not 100% truthful, they will hit you hard. You get tainted with the same Enron brush if you do not sweep the plate clean."

Hines questioned the plaintiff's experts as directly as possible, focusing on education rather than attack. He admitted that the Laredo's innermost piece of rubber, the inner liner, had a cosmetic design problem that made it appear to be poorly constructed. But expert witnesses for the defense testified that the tire failed because it had been damaged—perhaps by a pothole or curb—about 1,500 miles before the accident.

The judge allowed jurors to submit questions, which aided both sides, Hines said. A juror posed what became a key question in the case: Are you absolutely sure that the opening in the inner liner had absolutely nothing to do with the tire's failure? Yes, the defense witness replied. The panel deliberated for about five hours before siding with the defense. A motion for a new trial is pending.

David P. Angueira of Boston's Swartz & Swartz did not return calls seeking comment.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs described a degausser as "like something Rube Goldberg invented." The National Security Agency (NSA) used the machine, which is about 12 feet long, three feet wide and roughly three feet tall, to erase magnetized computer reels.

Two NSA employees who periodically fed tapes into the machine over several years blamed the degausser for nonmalignant brain tumors they developed. Tommy Grimes and Thomas E. Van Meter filed a products liability suit against Electro-Matic Products Co., a family-owned Michigan business they said failed to warn them about the risks of exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

Their attorneys asked the Maryland jury for more than $1 million each. Van Meter is retired on disability and Grimes continues to work at the NSA. The agency has not used degaussers since the early 1990s.

Defending the company and winning the case entailed educating jurors about epidemiology and debunking suspicions and rumors that exposure to electricity in a variety of forms—including power lines, cellphones and microwaves—damages human DNA and causes illnesses such as cancer and leukemia.

"The degausser is as close to a perfect case as you could get from a plaintiff's perspective," said defense attorney Harold M. Walter, because it emitted a magnetic field at least 1 million times greater than a high-tension wire. "Jurors have a concept that more is worse."

During the trial, Walter dipped his finger into a cup of water. "Here's one drop," he told jurors. "In the cup are a billion drops. If one drop of water doesn't hurt you, a billion drops won't hurt you either."

Defense experts testified that no studies have linked exposure to electromagnetic fields with damage to human DNA. Scientists have been unable to replicate the findings of one scientist who claimed to have found a connection, he said. He also introduced experts who explained that, given the number of NSA employees who'd used the degausser, the incidence of brain tumors should have been higher.

The cases of two other workers with brain tumors who sued in federal court were recently dismissed with prejudice, said Ted Flerlage, the plaintiffs' lawyer.

The plaintiffs erred, Walter claimed, by "drawing the bull's-eye around four of the bullet holes. You can't do that. You have to draw the bull's-eye first....I think it was a logical epidemiological argument that won the case."

Flerlage said he faced two challenges at trial: The most recent studies involving lab animals' exposure to magnetic fields showed abnormalities but not tumors, and he could not convince the judge to give instructions he felt followed the law on strict liability.

When it comes to defending securities class actions, attorneys often say they don't have much to go on. "There's no real book on how to try these cases," said defense attorney Robert P. Varian, because few end up in front of a jury.

A Stanford Law School professor estimated that fewer than 2% of nearly 800 U.S. securities cases were decided by juries between 1993 and 1998. In the Northern District of California, where San Francisco-based Varian practices, the last securities class action to go to trial was in 1991, when Apple Computer Inc. got a black eye in the form of a $100 million verdict for misleading shareholders.

Varian and his client, Everex Systems Inc., fared far better. He successfully defended the now-defunct computer maker against stockholders' accusations that executives issued fraudulent financial statements before the company tanked.

The plaintiffs sought $80 million but would have received the proceeds of a $50 million insurance policy. They offered to settle for $18 million before the case went to the jury, Varian said.

The defense worked with focus groups and jury consultants to determine how sympathetic jurors would be to stockholders and how much of the complex financial testimony they would digest. He relied heavily on graphics and charts, but "ultimately for jurors, it comes down to impressions...."

The defense's task was complicated by the ongoing Enron scandal. Varian initially feared that jurors might equate the two situations because both involved the credibility of auditors and the documents they produced. Testimony by Everex auditors highlighted their professionalism, honesty and trustworthiness, boosting the defense that all practices were above-board.

Plaintiffs' attorney Charles R. Peifer said the defense was bolstered by several factors, including an appeal and motions delays that stalled the case, which was filed in 1992, making the claims stale by the time they reached trial.

Also, the jurors, who were culled from Silicon Valley and the San Francisco area, had experience with the dot-com bust and slumping investments and therefore were less sympathetic to the shareholder plaintiffs.