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Jury blames Textron Lycoming for engine failures

A jury in Grimes County, Texas has found Textron Lycoming liable for fraud and ordered the company to pay approximately $96 million to Navasota, Texas-based Interstate Southwest Ltd. The verdict came February 15, following seven weeks of trial in Anderson, Texas.

The jury's award includes $9,725,650 in actual damages and another $86,394,763 in punitive damages. In addition, the verdict effectively precludes Lycoming from pursuing a $173 million indemnity claim against Interstate, which it had filed previously in a Pennsylvania court.

The case revolves around a number of small airplane engine failures that occurred when the airplanes' crankshafts broke in flight. Between 2000 and 2002, there were 24 failures and 12 deaths in Cessnas, Pipers, and other airplanes with Lycoming aircraft engines. Interstate Southwest supplied Lycoming with the crankshaft forgings for those engines.

Following the failures, Lycoming launched an investigation aimed at determining the cause. Its conclusion was that Interstate Southwest had overheated the forgings, weakening the steel.

But attorneys for Interstate found a different cause. Their experts were able to determine that Lycoming's design for the crankshafts, which dates back to smaller, lower horsepower engines from 40 years ago, was inadequate for the larger, higher horsepower engines that failed.

They also found that by adding Vanadium to the steel—something Lycoming decided to do just before the failures began—the company further limited the amount of stress the crankshafts could withstand. Lycoming had added Vanadium to make the steel harder and reduce the number of machining operations.

Ultimately, jurors agreed with lawyers for Interstate and found that even Lycoming's investigation of the crankshaft failures was fraudulent.