TEPaul, post 230 on the Findlay thread.
But with Shivas, tonight, on the phone, I speed-read the minute meeting text (prefacing that no one, NOT even a great "quick-study" lawyer could "audio-remember" the thing word for word. Shivas allowed previous and after to the fact that EVEN HE couldn't do that but he did, in fact, pick up and explain what he felt was the most important point of all or word----and most interestingly it was indeed, at least to me the most important point and word (AFTER I asked him to explain why a couple of time! )---I ain't no lawyer and never wanted to be but nevertheless this is why we pay those guys as much as we do! It all revolved around the meaning and essential reality of the word "APPROVED" and what it means and couldn't mean in this Merion "laying out" and "plan" and "courses" Wilson report context----at least how it all pertained to what the reports and records say Macdonald did----ie "approved."
DSchmidt, post 231 same thread.
. . . I don't even remember the date of the meeting he was reading, but it was the meeting where the Board appoved the plan.
I will say that from that single passage, and from one word in particular (a word that Tom actually didn't think was all that important until I told him why I thought it was not only important but damn near dispositive, as in "game, set, match"), I came to the immediate conclusion that there is no way CBM designed Merion - absent one theoretically possible extenuating circumstance that I raised with Tom, and does not appear to make sense in the context of the creation of Merion for practical business and club "political" reasons. (And actually, now that I think about it: make that two circumstances - it's possible that in subsequent meeting minutes, the statement in the minutes Tom read to me on the phone may have been corrected. Tom, this is why, as DaveM correctly points out, partial records are dangerous things. The Chicago Tribune once wrote "Dewey Defeats Truman", but they subsequently corrected it).
I agree with DaveM that one should not draw conclusions from a partial record without examining all other available documentation. And I'm not willing to do that. But I will say that based on what I know from my life (and, yes, legal) experience, it's completely illogical for me to believe that there is anything that will trump the fact that CBM "approved" one of the five plans that the Board considered. He certainly had influence on the design, and he very well may have had great influence on the chosen design, but I can say with damn near absolute certainty that the guys around the table at that meeting (CBM included) did not consider the the chosen design to be CBM's work, and that it was not CBMs work.
Why? It's actually very simple and this is what I told Tom last night: nobody "approves" their own work. Has anybody ever heard of somebody saying "I hereby approve of what I just did", or "I hereby approve of my own work". Of course not! . . .
They are not equating "approved" or "approved of" with "liked." The are equating it with "chose" or "selected" or "approved" in the sense that the board later "approved" the same plan.