Matt Roetter: A window of opportunity

COEUR d'ALENE - Some people reach their pinnacle in life early, but others take a little longer.

Matt Roetter is a late bloomer and he prefers it that way.

Roetter grew up on the Atlantic Ocean in Connecticut, and after high school he was drawn to the University of Idaho's forestry program in the early 1970s.

He studied for two years at the College of Forestry but didn't earn a degree. Then he moved to Coeur d'Alene and has never looked back.

He bought the Beehive Restaurant near City Park (which became the Parkside Bistro before it was demolished a couple of years ago) with his college roommate and converted it into a skateboard shop and cafe. It was a summertime business, but wasn't enough to support his young family.

He went to work with Pella Windows through the 1980s and began manufacturing his own line of custom wood curved windows and moldings out of his garage.

Little did he know at that time his experience would lead him to a fascinating career in investigation work.

He eventually became a distributor for Hurd Windows through the 1990s and finally Kolbe & Kolbe Windows before breaking out on his own.

It was the time he spent with Hurd Windows which put the twist on his life, which led to his most recent success.

Roetter went to work with Hurd because they had a window they claimed had a very high insulation value, but the pressurized gas they used posed a problem when transporting them over high mountain passes.

So Hurd put a pressure release system on the window that prevented the glass from bulging and shattering under pressure, but Roetter suspected it would have an impact on the insulation value of the window.

He sent the window to a university to be tested and found that, in fact, the pressure release system cut the insulation value in half.

Hurd sued Roetter twice to keep him quiet, but Roetter prevailed.

That process, combined with his experience in windows, helped Roetter become an expert in fenestration, which is a fancy term for the arrangement, proportioning, and design of windows and doors in a building.

Roetter started Roetter's Windows and Doors, which soon became a consulting company, where he advises attorneys in class action lawsuits and sometime acts as an expert witness. He also owns another company called Research Investigators.

His expertise is in fraud, professional malpractice, product liability, personal injury, both civil and criminal investigations and class action work.

His resume is loaded with legal cases that he has worked on, and he has several letters of reference from congressmen to Idaho's State Attorney General.

He is considered one of the most experienced fenestration experts in the country, and he was most recently written up in the Newtown Post-Examiner for debunking a conspiracy theory in the Sandy Hook School shooting.

You can read that story here: http://newtownpostexaminer.com/2014/09/21/fenestration-expert-addresses-sandy-hook-broken-glass-claims/

Roetter loves Coeur d'Alene and the outdoor opportunities Idaho has to offer.

So how did this journey begin?

I wanted to experience the West, so I looked up the two top forestry schools in the West. They were University of Oregon and University of Idaho. Idaho was the second best forestry school at that time.

Sight unseen, I flew out to Spokane and got on a bus to Moscow. We were driving through the Palouse and I wanted to be near the Rocky Mountains. The map said Moscow was near the Rocky Mountains and there were no mountains. There were no trees, and I am thinking to myself what did I get myself into. All the way to Pullman and there were no trees, but then finally when we got to Moscow, I realized we were on the edge of the mountains.

That is what brought me to Idaho, and I have never gone back. I love the outdoors.

When did you move to Coeur d'Alene?

I moved to Coeur d'Alene in the mid-70s when there was only one red light in town on First and Sherman. Buttery's was the main grocery store, and you knew 70 percent of the people in town so it took a half hour to buy a gallon of milk because you had to stop and talk with everyone in the store. I miss that. I miss the smallness of what Coeur d'Alene used to be, but unfortunately the jobs weren't here, and a lot of the young people who grew up here would have to leave for work in cities. Now in a way it's better. There are more opportunities for young people. There are more jobs because of the growth, but with the growth you lose the smallness. That's the tradeoff.

Did you go into forestry?

I didn't.

What happened?

Well back then I looked into the job market and it was difficult for a white male to get into the Forest Service because of Affirmative Action. I worked for the state one summer up near Priest Lake on Indian Creek during my freshman year, and government work didn't fit with what I wanted to do.

What did you want to do?

I bought a business with a college roommate. We bought the old Bee Hive and remodeled it. I wanted a business and to try new stuff. We ran it for a couple of years, and then we sold it on contract. It was on railroad property and we had an annual renewable lease. That wasn't very secure because that could end anytime like it just did (when Parkside Bistro lost its lease and the building was demolished). Both of us were married with young families, and we got a few hundred bucks a month for five years, and that was pretty good for a young family just getting started.

What was next?

I started with Pella Windows in 1981 and opened their new store in North Idaho. That was when interest rates were 19 to 21 percent and nobody was building unless they had cash. So I didn't know any better, but I went out and did OK. You do what you have to living in North Idaho, and with the economy the way it was I made it work. I gained a lot of experience dealing with contractors and architects, and solving construction problems.

You mentioned manufacturing windows?

The entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and I thought 'why not start my own window business?' So I did. I started to manufacture curved windows and moldings. It's old technology. I figured it out and started bending veneers. I got my veneer from Idaho Veneer. Then I modified a horizontal planer that could produce curved moldings. I was working for Pella and did this in my garage, and I sold some to Pella and Anderson Windows. Not a lot of them, but I was starting slow. I knew I wanted to do it full time.

So that is where Roetter Windows and Doors started?

Yes, that is when I decided to open my own shop, but I knew I couldn't survive just manufacturing curved windows and moldings. I found a company called Hurd Millworks which was a national company and I became their local distributor with half of Washington and half of Idaho. Long story short at Highway 95 and Northwest Boulevard. there is a marina building. I bought that building and remodeled it. I had 15 employees and that is where I produced my moldings. We did well. We had exponential growth. Then I got in a fight with Hurd.

What about?

The reason I selected them was because they produced a window with a high "R-value," which is a way to measure resistance to heat loss. They were touting an R-8 window which was incredible, and in a cold climate that is what attracted me. We promoted it to the construction industry, home and garden shows, and we even advertised it on "This Old House" on public television. Well, Hurd was filling their windows with krypton, which is an inert gas. To ship the windows from Wisconsin to Idaho they had to go over the Continental Divide. Glass that is sealed will bow way out at that elevation. Buy a bag of potato chips and go to Schweitzer and see what happens. So Hurd put in a capillary tube to equalize the barometric pressure with pressure in the glass. I asked them what happens to the gas when you do that and they said trust us - it is in there. I ended up sending the window to Rutgers University to be tested, and I found out the gas was gone. That means the R-value went from R-8 to R-4 and we were misrepresenting it. I said to Hurd that they were doing something wrong. I had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the business and what they were doing was fraudulent. So they sued me, my wife and my corporation twice to shut me up.

What did you do?

So I got the attorney generals of Oregon, Washington and Idaho after them. They ended up settling the case with Hurd.

How did Hurd's case against you come out?

They sued me once and then they sued me twice and the attorney I had representing me, turned on me, so I had to sue him for malpractice and then sue the insurance company that was paying for the attorney. They didn't want to pay anymore, so I sued and won against the insurance company and the attorney. Then I had the top law firm in Wisconsin, and we settled the legal malpractice case. I wasn't made whole.

I bet you learned a lot, huh?

Through that process I learned a lot about lawsuits and also through the Hurd litigation with the attorney generals I initiated four class actions against Hurd. They ended up filing bankruptcy due to ongoing litigation costs.

So you shut them down?

Yes, so the little guy can win but it can be really painful. You can lose a lot of through emotion and energy. The little guy can win against a big company if you do it the right way. The maze of the legal system makes it difficult.

It looks like you made some lemonade out of those lemons.

Well I took what I knew and I utilized it to do what I do now. That's the Roetter Window and Door part of my business. I do expert witness testimony class-action lawsuit consultant. Sometimes law firms will hire me to consult them rather than testify for them for a variety of reasons.

So the story in the Newtown paper was accurate? You are nationally renowned?

I've been retained on more window and door class action cases than any other fenestration expert witness or consultant in the United States. For that reason, I guess you could call me the top.