Competition record
Mr. David's Flooring International
Deep profile · 1 linked library matter
David's Flooring International pleaded guilty to rigging bids and fixing prices on commercial flooring. The plea recommended a criminal fine between $1.2 million and $1.6 million in the Justice Department's flooring probe.
Overview
Mr. David's Flooring International installs commercial flooring: the carpet, vinyl, and related work in offices and other non-residential jobs. Building owners and general contractors take several quotes. Those quotes are supposed to be prepared separately.
The company pleaded guilty to rigging bids and fixing prices with rivals. Rigging a bid, in plain terms, means the contractors agree who should win and the others submit prices that make the chosen bid look like the competitive one. The library status is fined. The case sits in a wider Justice Department probe of the flooring trade.
The plea recommended a criminal fine between $1.2 million and $1.6 million. This profile stops at that recommendation. It does not pick a number inside the range or describe a separate civil settlement. The customers were the businesses and public bodies that thought they had run a real tender for a floor.
Competition footprint
Commercial flooring is a subcontract. The general contractor often never meets the people who priced the rival quotes.
A guilty plea to bid rigging and price fixing is the criminal Sherman Act case, not a regulatory warning letter.
The recommended fine is a range, $1.2 million to $1.6 million, stated in the plea.
Consumer & business angle
A property manager comparing three flooring numbers cannot see which quotes were written to lose.
Other flooring contractors in the same probe are part of the industry story. This profile is the firm that entered this plea.
What to watch
- Related flooring prosecutions that show how wide the Justice Department's probe ran.
- Bid files on commercial floors that procurement teams still audit for complementary prices.
Markets
commercial flooring · flooring installation · local construction · government contracting · small business cartels
Also known as: mr davids flooring, davids flooring international