Metal-parts manufacturer LB Steel LLC filed for bankruptcy, hit with a nearly $30 million judgment in a legal battle over a Chicago airport project that played out during an industry-wide downturn, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Officials who put LB Steel into bankruptcy protection on Sunday said that they plan to look for buyers for the 310-worker company, which operates out of a 450,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in the Chicago suburb of Harvey. Last week, a judge ruled that LB Steel owes $27.5 million to Walsh Construction Co. in a dispute over LB Steel's work on a canopy and curtain wall that was built at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Chicago officials who hired Walsh in 2003 to handle the project later "identified defects in the canopy and curtain wall," according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago.
