Warranty Claim/Litigation Support for Bus Fleet

Our statistical analyses was a part of a claim that one transit agency had against the manufacturer of a fleet of buses that were the first builds of a new design.  The design was developed by vendors working with a unified national transit bus specification promulgated by the Urban Mass Transit Administration (today the FTA); unknown to the public transit agency at the time, the prototype buses had in fact failed testing as a result of frame cracks and the vendor entered production without having adequately addressed the issues.  The vendor had alleged that the lack of roadway maintenance and fleet maintenance was the root cause of these cracks, and not a design defect.  Through our analyses, we were able to show that there were no statistically significant differences in the quantity of frame cracks and the average mileage ran since delivery between different depots and different geographical locations, strongly suggesting that the measurable differences in quality of mechanical maintenance and roadway maintenance may not have been contributory factors in accelerating the frame failures.  Our analyses ultimately contributed to an agreed settlement between all interested parties that allowed the buses to be mothballed and sold to other transit agencies, who chose to operate them after substantial modifications by the vendor designed to address what is now thought to be an initial design defect.