Agreed. I wish the plaintiffs luck; but it will be a very tough sell in court. In the E-AB world, any manufacturer has clients sign waivers holding the manufacturer harmless if anything goes wrong, because when it comes to the build part, the builder is by all accounts THE manufacturer, and is ultimately responsible for ensuring the suitability of everything he/she chooses to use for flight use. FAR Part 21 outlines this as well, hence a part of the "51% Rule".

But the questions will be "how was I to know that this material was fraudulent?" and "how can you claim that the product was made in America when you knew it wasn't?".

The kicker about this whole thing was that the boomer who owns the company actually piped up saying that he had been subsidizing the company out of pocket the last few years. In other words, he knew they had bad accounting and bad product, but did nothing, likely because he was that convinced of his market position. Typical boomernomics.

In either case, the reputation of the company is toast.