Alcoa has sued PPG in US Distric Court in Pittsburgh alleging the glassmaker fixed prices for plant glass and divided up the US market with other top glass producers. While PPG, the largest US glass producer, has been named in the lawsuit, the central character in the case and others like it is Toledo-based Libbey-Owens-Ford, which, the Alcoa complaint indicates, has been the subject of a criminal prosecution in Ohio by the US Justice Dept. Alcoa decided to file its lawsuit in late January because its subsidiaries, Alcoa Extrusion and Kawneer, buy plate glass to produce windows for commercial buildings. Settlement of a large number of ongoing cases had already been proposed. Alcoa said that notice of previous settlements of other ongoing cases was the first it had heard of pending cases with similar charges.
