"It'll be a grand fight," predicted Irish Inventor Harry Ferguson four years ago, when he slapped a $251 million antitrust and patent infringement suit against Ford Motor Co., its subsidiary, Dearborn Motors Corp., Henry Ford II and other Ford officials. Ferguson was right; his suit turned out to be the biggest legal battle in the auto industry since 1911, when old Henry Ford himself successfully broke the famed Selden patent.*
End of a Partnership. The fight started when Henry Ford II canceled an oral agreement which his grandfather had made in 1939 to manufacture a tractor for Ferguson according to Ferguson's...