From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
WILL O.J. SIMPSON GET THE chair? Actually that decision has been made—and the answer is a big no. Neither, it seems, will Judge Lance Ito—because Johnnie Cochran beat him to it. But Robert Shapiro and Marcia Clark have already gotten theirs, and so have seven others including Ito's clerk Deirdre Robertson.

The chair in question, made by BodyBilt Seating Inc. of Navasota, Texas, to ease aching backs, has become the main seat of justice in the O.J. courtroom. The first one appeared after Shapiro, finding the trial to be a big pain in the lower back, visited the Relax the Back store in Los Angeles in early March. Owner Dairl Johnson recommended BodyBilt's $1,500 executive chair, which is made of a steel frame and synthetic fabric and has an inflatable backrest and nine other ergonomic controls. Shapiro got Ito's permission to install it and soon attorneys on both sides, along with Ito, were petitioning for their own, mainly the $1,200 task version, which lacks a headrest. (Shapiro paid for his BodyBilt; the others are on loan from the store.) Cochran's, however, was usurped by F. Lee Bailey, and Cochran—apparently unafraid of unseating a sitting judge—grabbed the chair meant for Ito. Simpson wanted one too, but bailiffs vetoed the request, deeming it inappropriate.

All the subsequent publicity made the public sit up and take notice of the eight-year-old company owned by Mark McMillan, 41, and Drew Congleton, 33, leading to 6,000 additional units sold. The company's idea for the chair came out of thin air, so to speak. "Studies of astronauts in a gravity-free environment reveal that in its most relaxed state the body assumes a torso-to-thigh angle of approximately 128 degrees," says Congleton, whose family furniture-manufacturing assets were bought at foreclosure by McMillan, now president and CEO. "BodyBilt's chairs are designed to more closely emulate that posture." Now if they can only come up with an economically correct sofa for all the couch potatoes who have turned their spines into question marks while following the trial on TV....