Was The Orange County Chopper Wheelchair Bike a Stolen Idea?

When you get down to business, it isn’t always guaranteed to be as clean as it might seem. Sometimes, the structure can’t be all about an idea and execution, but instead, all kinds of messy legal issues can get in the way if you step out of line, whether it be intentional or not.

This time, we catch up with an Orange County Chopper story that had a Florida man by the name of Christ Tavantzis up in arms and ready to sue the bike builders after they allegedly ripped off his idea. Looper.com reports that “Tavantzis, who suffered from polio and was wheelchair-bound until his death in February 2016, claimed that at a bike show in 2008 he pitched the idea of a handicap-accessible, three-wheel motorcycle to members of the shop. Tavantzis contends that this bike, which the American Chopper team built at the beginning of 2010 in conjunction with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, was a ripoff of his original idea, for which Tavantzis held a patent.”

Regardless of if the idea was for a good cause or not, OCC would find themselves in some deep legal water. In terms of what would eventually happen with the lawsuit – his case would go down as a “shotgun pleading” which means that those who were meant to read and interpret the information saw it as convoluted, confusing, and repetitive. Therefore, it would be “dismissed without prejudice” meaning that it could be revised and resubmitted at a later date.

We learned that Tavantzis had passed away in early 2016 and as of July 26, 2017, we’ve seen nothing in regards to if the case had ever made headway or not. It isn’t clear if OCC was in the wrong here or if it was simply a gray area but I guess that we will never see the case reach a decision. I guess that one positive that could come from this could be the possibility of disabled people having the opportunity to ride with a design like this one!