A recent $1 billion lawsuit claims a manufacturer modified its product to cut costs – which led to deadly results. Did the company put profits before safety?
Trinity Industries, based in Dallas, is a manufacturer of roadway guardrails. Many state transportation departments purchase guardrails from the firm and install them on highways.
States also use funds and get help from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to install the guardrails.
Trinity was hit with a federal False Claims Act lawsuit this year charging the company changed the design of the guardrails in 2005 to save money. The problem: The company never got approval from FHWA for the change, and it continued to sell the product to states and collect federal money.
Meanwhile, the re-designed guardrails have been blamed for five deaths and several injuries, according to lawsuits filed against the company.
The manufacturer is fighting back, and is currently on trial in front of a U.S. District Court in Texas.
Here’s how the whole saga unfolded:
Was product re-design covered up?
Trinity began manufacturing a roadway guardrail known as the ET-2000 in 1999, which became common on many state highways. Back in 2005, the company redesigned the product, and re-named it the ET-Plus.
The lawsuit claims the re-design was mainly a cost-savings measure. ABC News obtained a company memo that shows the re-design would save the firm $2 per guardrail, which equated to $50,000 a year in savings.
Trinity’s re-design of the guardrail led to serious safety issues, though, according to the lawsuit. Instead of absorbing the blow of a car crash, the guardrails can allegedly puncture cars and cause serious and fatal injuries.
The company tested the redesigned product in 2005 and 2006. Apparently, the guardrails failed all five tests.
Trinity says the tests were only part of a research and development project, and the re-designed product was never sold or installed.
The lawsuit claims otherwise. Trinity is charged with modifying the product, and then never:
- notifying the FHWA of the changes, as required by law, or
- submitting results of the five failed tests.
Meanwhile, state governments continued to buy the re-designed product and install them on highways.
In 2012, Joshua Harman, a Trinity competitor, discovered the product re-design during a patent dispute. Harman notified the feds, then filed the federal lawsuit.
Feds say product is safe
The FHWA moved pretty slowly after learning about the potentially deadly Trinity guardrails.
An FHWA engineer looked into the guardrails, and The New York Times revealed that the engineer wrote in an email to co-workers:
“There does seem to be a valid question over the field performance.”
In another email to a safety expert, the engineer said it was “hard to ignore the fatal results.”
The FHWA drafted a letter to Trinity that asked for additional testing of the product. The letter said:
“Even though the ET-Plus terminal can still meet crash testing requirements, the number of highway crashes with fatal injuries involving the ET-Plus terminal does not match the excellent history of the original ET-2000 terminal.”
Problem was, the FHWA never sent the letter. An agency spokesman said they didn’t have enough evidence that there were serious issues.
Trinity and the FHWA claim that crash tests in 2005 and 2012 showed the product was safe, so it’s still eligible to be used on state highways.
The FHWA is asking state transportation departments to let them know about the safety performance of the product. But FHWA also said in a statement that it views the case as a business dispute between two competitors.
Trinity claims the allegations are false and misleading, and has pointed to the fact that the FHWA hasn’t banned the product for use.
Meanwhile, the company has been hit with lawsuits from crash victims, and state transportation departments are banning the guardrails.
Crash victim becomes double amputee
A North Carolina man sued the company this year after slamming his SUV into the guardrail and losing his legs. Instead of absorbing the blow from the crash, the man’s lawyer said the guardrail penetrated the car.
A recent study also raises safety concerns about the product. The University of Alabama at Birmingham studied serious car accidents in Missouri and Ohio, and researchers found that the re-designed guardrails were 2.86 times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than the original model.
Nevada stopped buying and installing the guardrails in January. Missouri and Massachusetts followed suit last month, and other states are looking into it.
Trinity is being sued for about $775.7 million in damages, not including attorney fees. In total, the lawsuit could cost the manufacturer $1 billion. The trial is before a jury this week and could wrap up soon.
What do you think about this lawsuit against this manufacturer? Do you think the company put profits before safety? Or do you think the claims are false and misleading, as the company argues?
Be sure to give us your take in the comments section below.
