Attorney John Gehlhausen received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Evansville, Indiana, and went on to earn his Juris Doctorate from Vanderbilt University and served in the United States Air Force as a Judge Advocate General. Mr. Gehlhausen became a member of the Colorado Bar and began private practice in Lamar, Colorado, as a general practitioner. Because Lamar, Colorado is a rural area, Mr. Gehlhausen began seeing more and more deaths and serious injuries caused by farm machinery. In many cases, these accidents could have been avoided by proper safety design including location of controls where they could not be accidentally activated. Handling these cases eventually led to his specialization in this field.