Crankshaft machining at Lycoming, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

by Paul Bertorelli and Russ Niles

If you’re an aircraft owner, you’ve heard of Williamsport, Pennsylvania and Mobile, Alabama, but the tiny berg of Anderson, Texas doesn’t come immediately to mind as the kind of place where big things happen in the insular world of airplane engines. But after a little-noticed seven-week trial in early 2005, Anderson may have become a player.

Interstate Southwest Ltd. picked the state district court in Anderson as the venue to sue Textron Lycoming, claiming that it was damaged by Lycoming’s assertion that the forging house produced faulty crankshaft billets that resulted in 24 failures, 12 deaths and a massive recall by Lycoming in 2002. …