While most defects that cause highway injuries occur in vehicles, there is a new culprit on the roadways that most motorists would never imagine posed a risk. The guardrail ‘end terminal caps’ manufactured by Trinity Highway Products have been found to be defective, and are now suspended from use in 40 states including Texas. The rectangular terminal cap is supposed to be designed to absorb the impact of a vehicle that strikes it, but the Trinity caps have seen instances where they actually penetrate the vehicle and either impale or eject the driver.
No Disclosure Made by Trinity Following Design Changes
Trinity has been accused of making design changes in 2005 that caused the defect, but did not disclose those changes. The modification saved Trinity about $2 per guardrail, or around $50,000 per year. Federal regulators were not notified of the changes as is required.
Although no new guardrails are being installed, there may be countless Trinity caps in use across the state of Texas exposing motorists to an unforeseen type of risk on the highways. A jury in Texas recently decided that Trinity should pay $175 million in fines for failing to disclose the defect, which was made public by a company whistleblower. That fine will triple to $525 million under federal law. The fines were imposed for violation of the federal False Claims Act, and could be a precursor to further legal action against the company.
Testing is being conducted in Texas to determine if the design defect is present in state guardrails, although several injuries have already been attributed to the terminal caps, including a man who had his leg severed.
Widespread Potential Liability for Trinity
The fact that Trinity failed to disclose a defective design change that has resulted in injuries and deaths, exposes the company to widespread liability. The terminal caps are used nationwide, and apparently there is no dispute that they caused the injuries cited by federal investigators. The primary concern at the moment is the existence of these terminal caps on over 200,000 stretches of highway across the country. So far, only Virginia has called for replacement of all Trinity guardrail caps, but other states should follow soon. Replacement of the guardrails could cost as much as $5 million in one state alone, according to a study conducted in Delaware.
There are a few lawsuits pending, but the obvious non-disclosure by Trinity of the defect and resulting injuries could bring many more cases in the near future. Given that the guardrails have been in use since 2005, there could be hundreds of cases where victims did not realize that their injuries were partially caused by the guardrail that was supposed to minimize the harm in an accident. This is an unusual product defect case that could snowball into a class action lawsuit if enough injuries and deaths are found to have been caused by the guardrails the past 10 years.