A Texas court has dismissed an appeal from Quebec's aerospace giant Bombardier and now it must pay $8.1 million U.S. to the owner of the Houston Astros baseball team and another weathly American investor because it sold a plane employees knew contained a problem engine.
The pair sued for breach of contract and fraud after finding out their supposed brand-new Bombardier Challenger 300 in fact contained a used engine that the manufactuer called a "two-time loser."
Astros owner James R. Crane and investor Neil Kelley paid $20 million for the aircraft in 2010.
The deal was for a mint vehicle but the left engine of the plane was anything but; it had a history of problems, the court learned, beginning when it was damaged extensively during shipping back in 2008.
Even after being serviced, it still experienced a host of troubles when it was installed on a number of planes, including oil contamination.
The Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas ruled this was not by accident, that pilots and supervisors at Bombardier knew of the problem but "were warned not to talk to Crane or Kelley."
According to one employee, she felt "someone was hiding something."
Bombardier's arguments that the plane was sold "as is" and the company had no fiduciary duty to tell the wealthy buyers about the engine were rejected on appeal, and the 8.1 million payout was upheld by the Dallas court.
Representatives for Bombardier were unavailable for comment but a spokesperson tells the Journal de Montreal the company will not speak further on the matter until it studies the ruling.
The original ruling was handed down two years, with Bombardier losing the appeal at the end of last month.