New Castle district seeks class-action status in turf lawsuit

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The New Castle School District on Thursday became the latest client to sue FieldTurf USA over what the district claims was defective turf on its football field.

The district filed the lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, in federal court in Pittsburgh, saying the Florida-based company’s product has not performed as advertised since its launch in 2005 with a nationwide marketing blitz.

The company has been the target of many other lawsuits across the country since an investigation in 2016 by a New Jersey media outlet into its business practices. The media project’s findings are cited in the complaint.

Lawyers for the New Castle district said it bought FieldTurf’s “Duraspine Turf” for its football field in 2009 at a cost of $800,000, but that it started to fall apart after a year.

The lawsuit, filed by Philadelphia lawyers Daniel Levin and Charles Schaffer, is asking for reimbursement for costs, punitive damages and a determination that FieldTurf was “unjustly enriched” by selling a product it knew was defective. Between 2005 and 2012, the lawsuit says, FieldTurf earned more than $570 million installing 1,400 fields.

FieldTurf disputed the New Castle claims, saying company records show it installed a different kind of field at the school, not Duraspine, that has not been the subject of complaints.

“The school district has gotten roughly 12 years of use from the field — well beyond the standard eight-year warranty term,” FieldTurf said in an email.

The lawyers who filed the lawsuit did not respond to messages Thursday.