A New Jersey federal magistrate judge has preliminarily approved a class action settlement in multidistrict litigation over allegedly defective synthetic field turf which included plaintiffs in California, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

The suits alleged that FieldTurf USA, based in Calhoun, Georgia, installed artificial turf in 1,700 soccer, baseball and other sports venues in the United States from 2005 to 2012, generating $570 million. The lawsuits, half of which are class actions, were filed after a series of articles published in December by NJ Advance Media reported that the turf was defective.