I remember early in my work with an PME engineering firm a time where a board of trustees for a church had watched too many episodes of Richard Schuller broadcasting from the Crystal Sanctuary, and had decided they had wanted to build their new church building in a similar fashion, with glass and exposures to sunlight everywhere. My boss had me run the calculations, and it was soon apparent that with the constraints that the church had placed on the mechanical engineering budget, there was absolutely no way we were going to be able to promise the client that we could actually cool the sanctuary to anything close to bearable conditions. My boss then looked at the numbers, nodded in agreement, and declined to work any further on the job, stating that it was impossible.
Well, that church group was furious, but my boss, being the cantakerous old Merchant Marine Sailor soul that he was, got things into enough of a tizzy that arbitration was called in, despite the agreement of other engineers stating that the plan was pretty impossible. At the first meeting of all parties involved, my boss stood right up, stared right into the church lawyers' eyes, and outright told them, "I'm sure you are perfectly good lawyers, with perfectly wonderful degrees in many aspects of the law. But gentlemen, I guarantee you - you will not win here. Because if there's one thing that supersedes any law that you will bring forward here, it's the laws of physics!"
Well, that church group was furious, but my boss, being the cantakerous old Merchant Marine Sailor soul that he was, got things into enough of a tizzy that arbitration was called in, despite the agreement of other engineers stating that the plan was pretty impossible. At the first meeting of all parties involved, my boss stood right up, stared right into the church lawyers' eyes, and outright told them, "I'm sure you are perfectly good lawyers, with perfectly wonderful degrees in many aspects of the law. But gentlemen, I guarantee you - you will not win here. Because if there's one thing that supersedes any law that you will bring forward here, it's the laws of physics!"
The meeting didn't last too long after that.