A Virginia guardrail company belonging to a man who won a whistle-blower verdict against competitor Trinity Industries Inc. has filed for bankruptcy, Bloomberg reported today. Spig Industry LLC of Bristol, Va., had no income in 2014, according to its bankruptcy filing. In October, a federal jury in Marshall, Texas, found that Trinity defrauded the U.S. of $175 million by making changes to its ET-Plus guardrail system, designed to absorb the impact of a crash, without telling federal safety regulators. The whistle-blower lawsuit was brought by Joshua Harman, who with his brother Christopher helps run Spig Industry. In the whistle-blower case, Joshua Harman, who stands to gain as much as a third of the final judgment, said that his company had to file for bankruptcy protection to prevent the foreclosure of its manufacturing plant and the site on which it sits. The company listed assets of $21 million and debt of $11.7 million in court filings Monday in bankruptcy court. Trinity shares have risen almost 15 percent since a pair of favorable findings by federal regulators. The Federal Highway Administration concluded on March 11 that the Dallas-based company didn’t try to hide alleged defects in its shock-absorbing devices, and on March 13 it said that the devices had passed a second round of crash tests. The case is In re Spig Industry LLC, 15-70310, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Western Virginia (Roanoke).
