FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                          AT
TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1997                              (202) 616-2771
                                               TDD (202) 514-1888

         JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CHARGES PENNSYLVANIA COMPANY
        WITH CONSPIRING TO ALLOCATE AND RIG BIDS ON BRIDGE
            INSPECTION AND STRUCTURAL RIGGING SERVICES


     A Pennsylvania rigging company was charged today by the
Department of Justice with conspiring to rig bids and to allocate
certain customers for bridge inspection and structural rigging
services.  

     In a one-count felony charge filed in U.S. District Court in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Department's Antitrust Division
charged Pittsburgh Rigging Company, Inc. of Clinton, Pennsylvania
with conspiring to allocate certain customers and rig bids to
those customers for services -- which typically include providing
manpower, traffic control, and boom and bucket trucks for bridge
inspection sites.  The Department said the conspiracy, which
violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, took place from September
1993 through September 1995. 
 
     According to the charge, the company conspired with another
rigging company to suppress and eliminate competition for bridge
inspection and structural rigging services by discussing and
allocating bids to certain customers before those bids were
submitted to project owners or general contractors.
  
     Joel I. Klein, Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge
of the Antitrust Division, and Frederick W. Thieman, United
States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, said
the charges resulted from a grand jury investigation of bid
rigging and customer allocation in the bridge inspection and
structural rigging services industry. The case was filed by the
Antitrust Division's Philadelphia Field Office with the
assistance of the Pittsburgh branch office of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.

     The maximum penalty for a company convicted of a violation
of the Sherman Act is a fine of $10 million, twice the pecuniary
gain the corporation derived from the crime, or twice the
pecuniary loss suffered by the victims of the crime, whichever is
greater.

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97-286