Cook Composites exonerated in gelcoat claim

Posted on 07 July 2010

Cook Composites and Polymers was again found not responsible for cracking of gelcoat on yachts built by Viking Yacht Co. and Post Marine Co. between 1997 and 2004.

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The opinion, issued last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, affirms a jury verdict issued last July after a five-week trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

"We are very pleased to put this behind us once and for all. Although this outcome was always expected, it is nice that we can finally redirect all of our attention back to the more productive activity of focusing on our customers and business," CCP president and CEO Paul Colonna said in a statement.

The Third Circuit also affirmed the district court's summary judgment rulings, including its ruling dismissing the plaintiffs' New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act claims and common law fraud claims on the eve of the trial, according to CCP's attorneys.

At trial last year, CCP presented evidence that the gelcoat in question met CCP's warranties, that Viking's and Post's experience was unique to them and not shared by any of CCP's other gelcoat customers, and offered expert testimony in support of CCP's product.

Viking had no comment, as the company had yet to review the decision with its lawyers, spokesman Peter Fredericksen told Soundings Trade Only.

A representative from Post Marine had no comment.

Comments

I build a very nice skiff, and want to use the very best gelcoat money can buy. I need one that offers; deep, rich, high gloss color, and above average blush and weathering resistence. If not CCP, who?

When we had stress cracks in our decks we determine it to be caused by the resin. After breaking many test panels with different gels and resins we determined the resins are cracking the gel. Some of the resins used today with high levels of DCPD are very brittle versus the days of using ortho and iso resin, but the DCPD does help with the profile.

Carl... we had to laugh at your response since Polygard was known as one of the lowest quality gels on the market, but it was the cheapest, although they did make a good cheap bilge gel, ask Wellcraft.

WOW they got off, all of the boat companies we sell boats for had massive problems up until they switched to another gelcoat brand. They also blamed Cooks for "bad batches" of Gelcoat. Since they have switched we have had very few stress cracks in boats. One of my questions when looking at boat companies is do you use Cooks, if the answer is yes, my answer is NO.

We stop using CCP within 6 months after they took over Polygard and changed the Polygard gelcoat formulations. We experienced discolorations & cure issues that shut us down for weeks but they always blamed it on us & our processes, it was never never them. The customer is always in the wrong or so it seems with CCP.

It sure would be nice to have a good explanation from the boating industry about these problems, as there were other problems from other manufactures contributed (whether fairly or unfairly has never been adressed) to the COOK gel-coats. I have no knowledge of the origin of the problem but I sure know that manufactures other than VIKING and POST had very expensive gel-coat problem. There are still owners searching for solutions that are running in to a baricade of lawyers and double talk. The industry has had enough experience and history with gel-coats that when there are problems of a universal nature, we should not be dumping the problem on the customer, this will only hurt the boating industry in the long run.

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