Not just whistleblowin' Dixie

Northrop Grumman settles whistleblower case

Spurred by a Northrop quality assurance manager-turned- whistleblower, the government alleged Northrop's Navigation Systems business unit failed to make sure the electronics would work at the temperature extremes required for military and space uses, the department said in a statement Wednesday.

The agreement resolved claims made in a qui tam or whistleblower lawsuit filed in May 2006 against Northrop in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California by Allen Davis. Davis was employed as a quality assurance manager at Northrop's Navigation Systems Division facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. He maintained that Northrop failed to comply with testing requirements set out in a November 1998 protocol for the use of commercial parts in military systems.

After investigating, the United States alleged the failures to test continued from November 1998 until February 2007. Davis' share of the settlement amounts to $2,375,000 under whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act.