Trinity Industries, a maker of roadway guardrails, found itself on the defensive Wednesday in a federal whistle-blower trial as it tried to explain why five failed crash tests were not disclosed to authorities.
The case is being brought under the False Claims Act by Joshua Harman, a competitor who discovered that Trinity had changed the design of its ET-Plus rail head in 2005 without notifying the Federal Highway Administration, as federal rules require.
The redesigned guardrail has prompted safety concerns not just because of the federal lawsuit, but because states including Missouri and Massachusetts, conducting their own inquiries, banned the design last month.
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