“This pipe is buried under the streets of every major city in the country,” said Eric R. Havian, a lawyer with Phillips & Cohen who represented the states and municipalities. In some places, pipes made of PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, that were supposed to last 50 years or more exploded in their first year, causing injuries, floods and other dangers.
A federal jury in California found on Thursday that the nation’s largest maker of plastic pipe defrauded states and municipalities over a decade by knowingly selling them defective pipe for use in their drinking water, firefighting, irrigation and other essential public systems.
The jury’s decision entitles the states and municipalities to be compensated for their losses by the manufacturer, JM Eagle, a private company based in Los Angeles that has 20 plants in the United States and Mexico. The amounts are to be determined in the next phase of the proceedings, a second trial under the same judge but with a different jury. The case was brought under a law that calls for triple damages, plus additional penalties for each false claim submitted to a body of government.
Three states and 42 municipalities participated in the seven-week trial, and hundreds more qualify to participate in the second one because they also bought the affected pipe.
[…]
