Textron wins, loses some in engine-failure lawsuit

HOUSTON – A Texas appeals court has upheld key components of a 2005 jury verdict against the Lycoming engines division of Providence-based Textron Inc., but has set aside the lower court’s order that the company pay $96 million in damages to Interstate Southwest Ltd. of Navasota, Texas.
The case revolved around a reported 24 failures and 12 deaths, between 2000 and 2002, in Cessnas, Pipers and other small airplanes equipped with Lycoming engines that failed when the planes’ crankshafts broke in flight.
Interstate Southwest had supplied Lycoming with the crankshaft forgings for those engines. Lycoming blamed Interstate for the engine failures, but the other company’s legal team contended that testing showed the problem was Lycoming’s own crankshaft design.
The jury in the original lawsuit agreed, and also held that Lycoming had committed fraud against Interstate Southwest; it awarded Interstate nearly $10 million in actual and $86 in exemplary damages.
The 14th Court of Appeals in Houston partially affirmed the verdict, agreeing that the crankshaft failures were caused solely by a defect in the Lycoming design. But the appellate court also set aside the award of damages against Lycoming. •