Category: News Blog

First Memphis managed to elbow its way into ECOtality North America’s six-state electric vehicle project and now it’s on the verge of getting 69 charging stations.

After initially favoring Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Nashville for the demonstration project that seeks to accelerate use of electric cars, Memphis signed on to the initiative in February. The project is funded by a $99.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and also includes Arizona, California, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.

Today, members of the Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, and Memphis planning departments briefed their mayors about where they think the charging stations should be.

These are the proposed locations:

Bartlett
– Bartlett Boulevard/Malco West
– Kirby-Whitten/Stage
– Schnucks
– Kirby-Whitten/Hollywood Cinema
– Bartlett Performing Arts Center/Recreation Center
– Saint Francis Bartlett Hospital/Malco/Hotel area
– Malco Wolfchase
– Walmart

Collierville
– Town Square
– Collierville Middle School
– Collierville United Methodist Church
– Carrier Air Conditioning
– Schilling Office Park
– FedEx Technology Center
– Courtyard Marriott
– Central Church
– Baptist Memorial Hospital
– Collierville Town Hall
– Collierville Malco
– First Baptist Church
– Collierville Community Center
– Collierville High School
– W. C. Johnson Park

Germantown
– Germantown Performing Arts Centre
– Municipal Center
– Germantown Library
– Pickering Center
– Methodist Hospital
– Baptist Rehabilitation
– Forest Hill/Poplar Shopping
– Carrefour Center
– Germantown/Poplar Shopping
– Germantown Village Square
– Germantown Collection
– Exeter Village
– Saddle Creek/Saddle Creek South

Memphis
– Mississippi Greenbelt Park
– Peabody Place/Hotel
– National Civil Rights Museum
– Rhodes College
– Union at Cooper/Overton Square
– Christian Brothers University
– Tiger Lane
– Oak Court Mall/Laurelwood
– Botanic Garden/Audubon Park
– Racquet Club of Memphis
– Malco Paradiso
– Shelby Farms Park
– Wolfchase Galleria Mall
– I-40/Arlington
– FedEx Headquarters
– Hickory Ridge Mall
– Baptist Hospital
– Saint Francis Hospital
– Memphis International Airport
– Soulsville/Stax Museum
– St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
– Memphis Zoo/Brooks Museum of Art
– Pink Palace Museum
– Dixon Gallery and Gardens
– Theatre Memphis
– Lichterman Nature Center
– Medical Center/UT
– Agricenter International
– MLGW (six locations)
– Millington Library
– Frayser Library
– Raleigh Library
– Randolph Library
– Benjamin L. Hooks Library
– East Shelby Library
– Whitehaven Library
– Bert Ferguson Library

In addition to these public charging stations, anyone who buys the new Nissan LEAF electric car or the Chevrolet Volt hybrid gets a free home charger.

After months of delays, it’s almost certain that Memphis Fire Services will be able to get the eight alternative response vehicles (ARVs) it first proposed buying in January.

Thomas Malone, a district field service representative for the International Fire Fighters Association Local 1784, reversed the union’s position against the vehicles during a city council committee meeting Tuesday, citing a “spirit of cooperation.”

“I think [this issue] has been beat up enough and extended enough,” he said. “We have bigger fish to fry right now.”

Some of those fish include budget contraints and a continuing controversy over city pension funding.

Now that the fire department and union have agreed to go ahead with the ARV purchase, the proposal will go before the full council for a single vote today.

“It appears it’s going to pass,” said councilman Jim Strickland, chair of the Public Safety & Homeland Security Committee.

The ARVs, which respond to medical emergencies only, cost $62,500 apiece and could save the fire department anywhere from $4,000 to $17,000 a year in fuel, maintenance and other costs.

However, the vehicles can’t transport victims to the hospital or fight fires, facts union members have clung to since the ARV proposal first came up on Jan. 4th. They would have preferred to buy full-fledged trucks that are more versatile in emergencies, but those same trucks can cost $500,000 or more.

Councilman Kemp Conrad, who sympathized with safety and other concerns, reminded everyone of the city’s fiscal crisis and said ARVs ultimately are better than nothing.

“Let’s not let perfect get in the way of good,” he said. “I think this is a way we can keep our folks in the field doing what they’re doing.”

However, Strickland said he’s still not convinced the ARVs represent a significant cost savings. He had requested an analysis of capital and operating savings from the fire department, but never got them.

“If things go well [with the ARVs], you’d want eight more?” he asked fire department director Alvin Benson.

“If funding is available,” Benson answered.

If the ARV proposal passes today, the union’s next step might be introducing a resolution to buy better apparatus.

“This can come back up at a later time when we’re financially more sound,” Malone said.

Quick note for anyone who’s been following Memphis Fire Services’ alternative response vehicles (ARV) saga: It won’t be discussed again until April 15.

The issue was supposed to be revisited during today’s Public Safety & Homeland Security Committee meeting at City Hall but the committee didn’t meet.

The group’s chair, city councilman Jim Strickland, said through an aide that the item was tabled because Memphis Fire Association members had to go out of town. (They’re in Nashville protesting recent anti-union legislation.)

As last week’s Flyer cover story noted, the ARV issue first came up on Jan. 4th. The fire department wants to buy eight of the vehicles, which handle medical emergencies, to save fuel and other costs, but union members have raised safety and job concerns.

They insist full-fledged fire trucks are the answer most of the Bluff City’s emergencies. Fire administrators, however, contend that about 75 percent of the department’s cases are medical calls and not fires.

Stay tuned for the next installment in what has become the quintessential ongoing issue.

By Lindsay Jones

Orthopedics giant Smith & Nephew is suing nine former employees for $56 million or more over breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, civil conspiracy, and other allegations related to a knee replacement instrument. The company also has filed a temporary restraining order against them.

In its 29-page complaint, S&N accuses David T. Mehl, Luke Gibson, Megan Rumery, Andrew J. Wald, Ashley M. Deken, Carey L. Bryant, Kaleigh Ross, Patrick Conway, and Bonnie Walker of trying to use their insider knowledge to form their own entity. All nine were fired last week.

“The recently uncovered conspiracy involves several engineers, their managers, the department supervisor, and a director who committed overt acts with the collective intent to use S&N’s trade secrets and confidential information to start a competing business and intentionally and maliciously interfere with and disrupt S&N’s ongoing business,” according to the court documents.

Most of the defendants are Memphians and two have Mississippi addresses. Attempts to reach them were unsuccessful, and an attorney for Smith & Nephew referred all inquiries to the company, which issued a statement.

“Smith & Nephew takes intellectual property rights seriously and always seeks to protect it for the benefit of our patients and customers,” the statement reads.

At issue in the case is Smith & Nephew’s patient matched instrumentation program for knee replacement surgeries. Marketed under the name Visionaire, it allows surgeons to fit knee replacements more accurately using a customized molded guide, or template, that shows them how much bone to remove.

This increases surgical efficiency and shortens the amount of time patients are under anesthesia. Smith & Nephew engineers customize the guides based on preoperative images of patients’ bones.

Smith & Nephew contends that Mehl and his colleagues, who were in charge of working on patient cases at the company’s Brooks Road facility, felt it was trying to gain their knowledge and eliminate their jobs.

“Mehl stated that S&N wanted to keep the Visionaire group as a case processing group, learn what the group knew, and then outsource all of the Visionaire processing, essentially leaving the group without a purpose,” court documents say.

To circumvent this, Mehl and the others planned a “mass resignation” to start their own business using the technology they helped develop and improve since around 2008. Their idea was to act as consultants for Smith & Nephew at first and later sell the bootleg technology to the London-based company’s competitors.

“We can now communicate in ways other than whispering or texting,” says an e-mail from Walker dated March 8.

The e-mail goes on to request that recipients update their resumes and create resignation letters so they could follow through on their plans to leave the company.

Andrew Burns, S&N’s media relations manager in Memphis, said he could not disclose how much revenue Visionaire generated since it began being marketed in 2009. But the court documents say harm from the proprietary information getting out would be “immediate and irreparable.”

It’s also not clear how quickly patient cases are being fulfilled with nine team members off the job. The average product development engineer is expected to work about five cases a day, according to the court documents.

“Despite [the former employees’] attempts, there has been no disruption in service to our physician customers or the patients they serve,” the company statement says.

Smith & Nephew recently made news when rumors spread of its possible acquisition by an American equity consortium, and when it made known its intention to create 100 new jobs in Memphis during the first quarter.

Smith & Nephew already employs more than 2,000 people in Memphis.