Fayette County CVH19930292: the docket

Fayette County Court of Common Pleas, Washington Court House, Ohio. Case CVH19930292, Willis and Harper v. Meyer: the dealership suit that produced the 1996 finding of “gross and egregious fraud” against the Water Fuel Cell, and with it almost everything the world believes it knows about Stanley Meyer.

The archive asked, in episode 34, for somebody to go and pull this file. It is online. What follows is the court’s own record, read on 22 September 2026: the case sheet, then all 103 docket entries from the complaint of 21 September 1993 to the destruction of the exhibits in 2014, exactly as the clerk’s system prints them.

The case sheet

The case sheet names the current holder of the bench as presiding judge. The judge who tried it is named throughout the docket itself: Corzine.

What the docket settles

The complaint, the jury and the venue. The complaint was filed on 21 September 1993 and served on Meyer by certified mail two days later. On 27 January 1994 he filed a “Demand for Change of Venue & Demand Trial by Jury with Exhibits.” Both were opposed — the memorandum contra of 18 February 1994 carries affidavits from Dwight Coffman and Forrest Harper — and he got neither.

The fight over testing the cell. On 21 April 1995 the plaintiffs asked to inspect and test the demonstration device. Meyer moved for a protective order on 18 May; they moved to compel on 30 May; James Detling filed an affidavit in opposition on 7 June and Meyer a supplemental affidavit on 23 June. A stipulation and protective order was entered on 27 October 1995, nine days after the deposition at which, on Meyer’s account, the plaintiffs’ expert added a white powder to the water.

The trial dates. Certificates for court stenographer fees are filed for 1 February and 2 February 1996, and three more on 14 May 1996. Two sittings, February and May, exactly as Meyer described them.

The motion that was overruled before the reply was filed. This is the one thing in Meyer’s account that looked impossible to check, and the docket checks it:

The motion was overruled on the third. The defendant’s filing went in on the fourth. Meyer wrote in December 1996 that the court had denied him before reading him, and the clerk’s own sequence says the same thing.

His own lawyers left first. Roger L. Hurley — of Hanes, Schipfer & Hurley — and James S. Detling were counsel of record. The motion for leave to withdraw as counsel for the defendant was filed on 29 July 1996 and the entry allowing it journalised on 9 August. From 23 July onward the filings are Meyer’s own, and the plaintiffs’ 20 August memorandum calls them what they were: pro se.

The judgment. The oral decision came on 7 August 1996; the decision transcript was filed on 11 September; the Final Judgment Entry (judgment for plaintiffs) was journalised on 24 September 1996 at Min 116/166–168, and certified copies issued to attorney Judkins.

Seven banks, and one dollar each. On 4 October 1996 the affidavit, order and notice of garnishment issued to seven banks — Huntington National, Fifth Third, Key Bank, Heartland, State Savings, National City and Bank One — each packet containing, in the clerk’s words, a “CK. FOR $1.00”, the statutory fee. Meyer was served the same day the banks were. Six returned the garnishment unexecuted. National City executed it twice:

$40,515.72 is, to the cent, the figure Meyer gave in the Public Notice two months later.

It was paid. An entry of 30 October ordered disbursement; $4,201.66 was refunded; Meyer paid the balance on 9 December 1996 — “defendant’s balance payment response to answer of garnishment including any court costs therein”. On 6 March 1997 the court filed a Final Entry of Disbursement & Entry of Judgment Satisfaction, copies mailed to attorney Judkins, Stanley Meyer and Judge Corzine. The balance due on this case is zero.

And then, in 2014, it was thrown away. On 18 June 2014 the court filed a notice of destruction of exhibits and depositions. Nine days later the copy mailed to Stanley A. Meyer came back: not deliverable as addressed, unable to forward. He had been dead sixteen years. The videotapes, the poster boards, the depositions of Willis, Harper and Meyer, exhibits 1 through 11 and A6 through A37 — the physical record of what the cell did in that lawyer’s office — are gone.

The docket, entire

103 dated groups, newest first, as the court’s search system prints them. The clerk’s system stores each note in fixed-width pieces and breaks words across them; the line breaks below are the court’s, and are left where they fall.