The Grumman era of production would result in a number of lawsuits related to defects in the A-frame of the 870, involving either Flxible's former owner Rohr or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), in whose buses where the first cracked A-frame problem was noticed in early December 1980 at their Ulmer Park Depot, yanked its NYC Transit Authority fleet for the first time in 1980 (a separate batch for MSBA was built with the problem rectified the next year) and sued Grumman.
This lawsuit would result in a settlement to fix all 870 buses built until that time (2,656 examples in all), along with an early termination of the build contract where the final 200 buses of the order were transferred to General Motors.

In 1983, shortly before Grumman sold Flxible, Grumman would sue Rohr Industries for $500 million in federal court, claiming that it was not aware of design flaws in the 870 model before it began production shortly after the sale closed.
Rohr was quickly granted summary judgment, which was upheld on appeal; the court noted that Grumman indeed had access to all of the testing information, including knowledge that testing was incomplete.

In 1984, following a fire in an Model 870 NYCTA bus number 411, David L. Gunn, on only his fifth day on the job with the MTA, ordered the Grumman 870 fleet within New York City off the road for the final time (the units for MSBA built in 1981, owned by Nassau County (NY), as well as the units built for the five private companies in the Borough of Queens, New York remained in service until the mid-1990s).
That May, the MTA sued Grumman again (which by this time no longer owned the line), asking for $184 million in damages as the result in fraud and $140 million to purchase replacements, referring to the buses as "lemons".
This time, Grumman would countersue the MTA for $1 billion, claiming that poor maintenance was the cause, and took out full-page advertisements in local media attesting to this fact.
The MTA would end up paying $56 million back to the Urban Mass Transit Administration for refusing to run the buses.
The buses would sit for nearly two years at the Brooklyn Army Terminal until late 1985, when UMTA exchanged the payment for equity in MTA properties, allowing for 835 of the 851 buses to be sold.
620 of the buses were rebuilt and sold to New Jersey Transit, 175 of these buses were also rebuilt and sold to the Queen City Metro of Cincinnati, Ohio, with the remaining 40 buses rebuilt and sold to a transit agency in Puerto Rico.
The 16 unsold buses (including now-preserved number 236) were held for evidence until the lawsuit was resolved, with the other 13 being sold to the Pioneer Valley Transportation Authority of Springfield, Massachusetts in early 1985, and the other two being scrapped.
The Grumman era of production would result in a number of lawsuits related to defects in the A-frame of the 870, involving either Flxible's former owner Rohr or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), in whose buses where the first cracked A-frame problem was noticed in early December 1980 at their Ulmer Park Depot, yanked its NYC Transit Authority fleet for the first time in 1980 (a separate batch for MSBA was built with the problem rectified the next year) and sued Grumman. This lawsuit would result in a settlement to fix all 870 buses built until that time (2,656 examples in all), along with an early termination of the build contract where the final 200 buses of the order were transferred to General Motors.
In 1983, shortly before Grumman sold Flxible, Grumman would sue Rohr Industries for $500 million in federal court, claiming that it was not aware of design flaws in the 870 model before it began production shortly after the sale closed. Rohr was quickly granted summary judgment, which was upheld on appeal; the court noted that Grumman indeed had access to all of the testing information, including knowledge that testing was incomplete.
In 1984, following a fire in an Model 870 NYCTA bus number 411, David L. Gunn, on only his fifth day on the job with the MTA, ordered the Grumman 870 fleet within New York City off the road for the final time (the units for MSBA built in 1981, owned by Nassau County (NY), as well as the units built for the five private companies in the Borough of Queens, New York remained in service until the mid-1990s). That May, the MTA sued Grumman again (which by this time no longer owned the line), asking for $184 million in damages as the result in fraud and $140 million to purchase replacements, referring to the buses as "lemons". This time, Grumman would countersue the MTA for $1 billion, claiming that poor maintenance was the cause, and took out full-page advertisements in local media attesting to this fact. The MTA would end up paying $56 million back to the Urban Mass Transit Administration for refusing to run the buses. The buses would sit for nearly two years at the Brooklyn Army Terminal until late 1985, when UMTA exchanged the payment for equity in MTA properties, allowing for 835 of the 851 buses to be sold. 620 of the buses were rebuilt and sold to New Jersey Transit, 175 of these buses were also rebuilt and sold to the Queen City Metro of Cincinnati, Ohio, with the remaining 40 buses rebuilt and sold to a transit agency in Puerto Rico. The 16 unsold buses (including now-preserved number 236) were held for evidence until the lawsuit was resolved, with the other 13 being sold to the Pioneer Valley Transportation Authority of Springfield, Massachusetts in early 1985, and the other two being scrapped.
Flxible Metro