Florida Attorney General: No Merit To Faulty Lawsuit

Los Angeles- February 17, 2010 – Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said his office is in agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, which on Feb. 9, 2010, dropped its qui tam investigation into JM Eagle’s manufacturing processes.

Florida was one of seven states initially involved in the lawsuit in 2006.

“After we looked at it, we concluded the same thing,” McCollum said of the federal government’s decision in a statement today. “So we chose not to join in this one.” As the feds dropped the case, only four of the seven states picked it up on their own, according to a press release by the law firm hired by the whistleblower, a disgruntled former employee of JM Eagle. Florida’s initial involvement was over pipe installed in a Ft. Pierce project in 2003 that has not failed.

During the exhaustive three-year federal investigation, JM Eagle turned over tens of thousands of pages of documentation supporting the quality of its products. The federal government also inspected its plants and consulted with outside industry experts before deciding not to intervene and join the case.

JM Eagle, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-grade, high-performance plastic pipe, has maintained that its pipe meets or exceeds all quality standards. Far from cutting corners, it has invested more than $350 million at its plants in the last decade.

“JM Eagle is committed to producing pipe of the very highest quality,” said President and CEO Walter Wang. “Any accusation that we would ever do otherwise is completely false. We are confident that the other four states who have erroneously joined the lawsuit will come to the same conclusion as the federal government and the state of Florida.”