A judgment has been issued in a whistleblower class action lawsuit brought against Trinity Industries Inc who is accused of modifying the guardrails it had sold to the federal government for use on federal highways without disclosing those modifications, as required, and failing to properly test those modified units.
The whistleblower will receive $199 million, 30 percent of the total $663 million judgement.
Filed in March of 2012, the whistleblower case claimed that between 2002 and 2005, Trinity made a series of changes to the design and specifications of the ET-Plus guardrail and that allegedly that guardrail modification can cause the end terminal to malfunction when a vehicle strikes it from the front. Additionally, the allegation states that rather than the guardrail ribboning out to absorb the impact as it’s designed, sometimes the guardrail locks in place, spearing straight through the vehicle and any occupants to happen to be in its way.
