The Justice Department has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a body armor manufacturer, accusing the company and its president of ignoring warnings that their vests were breaking down and endangering the lives of thousands of federal, state and local police officers.
Justice Department lawyers say in court filings that First Choice Armor founder Edward Dovner knew his company’s vests tended to break down in high heat and humidity but continued to sell thousands of the vests around the country.
The suit, filed Monday, seeks unspecified millions in recovery under the False Claims Act. It’s part of a wide-ranging Justice Department effort to crack down on body armor companies that government lawyers say put thousands of officers’ lives at risk when they continue to hawk Zylon-based vests.
Dovner used a federal grants program — created after two state troopers were killed because of faulty body armor — to sell at least 5,300 bullet-resistant Zylon vests to police agencies around the country, according to the federal lawsuit. By the early 2000s, though, company officials learned that Zylon broke down under high heat or humidity, the lawsuit states.
“The claims asserted yesterday by the Department of Justice are completely without merit,” said First Choice President Dan Walsh in an e-mail. “Not a single First Choice vest has ever failed to protect the individual wearing it. We stand behind the safety of every body armor product we manufacture and intend to further demonstrate this and defend ourselves in court.”
The Justice Department quotes from a 2003 e-mail, purportedly from a First Choice vice president to Dovner, warning him that the company’s subsidiaries may “have to do a recall that could very well bankrupt their [expletive.]” Dovner, Monday’s suit claims, continued selling the vests.
A few months later, Oceanside, Calif., police officer Tony Zeppetella was killed after an illegal immigrant shot him through his Zylon vest. Within days of that shooting, Forest Hills, Pa., police officer Ed Limbacher was critically wounded when a bullet pierced his Zylon vests. The vests in those shootings were made by a different company but had a similar makeup to First Choice’s, the Justice Department alleges.
In 2005, federal officials at the National Institute of Justice tested eight First Choice vests, the lawsuit states. All eight failed.
Authorities allege that Dovner lived the high life while his company churned out defective vests, buying himself a private jet, a Ferrari and a Maserati.
National Fraternal Order of Police Executive Director Jim Pasco said the continuing scandal around the Zylon vests “has really created a void of trust between rank-and-file officers and manufacturers.”
“Officer safety is paramount and one of the most integral parts of officer safety is soft body armor,” he said.
