More than three years later and more than a million dollars in legal costs all around, California mega-millionaire Ronald Tutor's ill-conceived effort to teach Wood River Valley yokels a thing or two about a big shot's rights is at an end.
The yokels did the teaching.
As a reminder: Tutor is the heavy construction tycoon who demanded landing rights for his 737-size Boeing Business Jet at Hailey's Friedman Memorial Airport, regardless of a longstanding weight limit of 95,000 pounds. Tutor's BBJ weighs 171,000 pounds on takeoff and more than 100,000 pounds on landing.
Tutor filed a lawsuit, arguing he needed the big jet to get to his vacation home north of Ketchum. Denying him that right constituted denying his constitutional rights, he griped.
Piffle, retorted U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill, who dismissed Tutor's complaint as little more than an inconvenience, since he could travel by car, bus, airlines or even his other jet, a smaller but still sumptuous Gulfstream III.
The lesson of Tutor's lawsuit? Lawsuits aren't the answer to every perceived injustice nor are they a way—no matter how much money a person possesses—to get one's own way. The airport's insurer spent $750,000 on lawyers. The court forced Tutor to reimburse the airport for $147,000 of the legal fees, which he paid recently.
The fact that his jet was too large for Friedman Memorial was obvious to everyone, except Tutor. How much better it would have been for everyone if he had accepted the limitations of a narrow, mountainous valley instead of launching a legal fusillade that helped no one.