Re: Remington accused of 700 series dangerous flaws
I thought I would throw this 1994 Business Week Article out here as another information resource, maybe to further the discussion? The documents described in the article are accurate - I can account to this fact because I have potentially seen all of them that are listed personally.
Note the "NBAR Program" design goals referenced in this article.
http://www.businessweek.com/archives/1994/b337363.arc.htm BusinessWeek: May 23, 1994
Legal Affairs
REMINGTON FACES A MISFIRING SQUAD
On Dec. 29, 1989, Glenn W. Collins was ready for a day of deer and wild-boar hunting in Eagle Pass, Tex. But while he was unloading his rifle after running into bad weather, it accidentally discharged, wounding him in the foot. That afternoon, the 53-year-old Amoco Corp. drilling supervisor had to have his foot amputated.
Collins claimed that the gun, Remington Arms Co.'s Model 700 bolt-action rifle, had gone off without his ever touching the trigger. And on May 7, he persuaded a Texas jury it had: After a six-week trial, Remington was ordered to pay Collins $17 million--$15 million of it in punitive damages. "I think what the jury was telling Remington and all gun manufacturers is that if you have a defective or unsafe product, you'd better do something about it," says Collins.
The Wilmington (Del.) gunmaker hasn't decided whether to appeal the verdict. But company spokesman William Wohl says Remington flatly denies that the Model 700--one of the top-selling hunting rifles in the U.S.--is faulty in any way. "We have believed in the past and continue to believe today that the Model 700 is one of the finest bolt-action rifles manufactured," says Wohl. "We see the product as a safe and reliable sporting firearm."
STORMY OUTLOOK. Remington maintains that the accidents stem from users' mistakes, not from product defects--a defense it used in the Collins' case. "When a gun goes off, the first thing people say is: 'It's not my fault,'" argues Kenneth Soucy, who is in charge of research and development at Remington. "Usually, we find that people have been messing around with the fire control. They get in there and screw things up."
Remington has done pretty well with that argument, winning 8 out of 12 jury trials since 1981. In a further 18 known suits settled since 1981, Remington has negotiated modest payouts--some as little as $5,000, say plaintiff lawyers. But the Collins case is the first time a jury saw internal Remington documents allegedly showing that the company had developed a safer design yet chose not to market it. "The documents established that Remington has had a design for at least a dozen years that eliminates the heart of the problem," says Richard C. Miller, a lawyer in Springfield, Mo., who represents Collins and 17 other plaintiffs in past and present suits against Remington involving its Model 700. "This implies that they knew something was wrong with the existing fire-control system."
Now, with the new documents and with 11 pending suits similarly alleging inadvertent firings of the Model 700, Remington's legal troubles could worsen. Plaintiff lawyers say more cases will be filed against Remington later this year, and pressure is mounting from consumers and Congress for more controls on firearms. Critics hope these actions, taken together, will compel Remington to consider modifying its rifle free of charge or recalling it if it can't conclusively demonstrate its safety.
That's a tall order for the nation's largest seller of shotguns and rifles. Four deaths have been linked to alleged malfunctions of the Model 700, in addition to dozens of injuries, court records show. Furthermore, some 1,400 written customer complaints have been lodged with the company over the past 16 years concerning the Model 700--many of which assert the rifle went off without the trigger being pulled. Remington still insists shooter errors are the problem. "If you're following the rules of safe gun handling...people won't get hurt," says Remington's Wohl.
In 1989, however, Miller discovered a program started in 1981 whose purpose, he says, was to design a safer bolt action rifle, thus contradicting Remington's repeated court statements that the Model 700 is flawless. The company argued that records pertaining to this new bolt-action rifle (NBAR) program were proprietary and unrelated to the Model 700. But more than 20 judges have ruled otherwise, forcing Remington to give up the documents. "The NBAR program had as its goal improvement of the defective fire control on the Model 700," wrote Texas Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Doggett in December, 1992. "[The documents] provide evidence of great significance...as to Remington's knowledge of defects and of its ability to implement safer alternative designs."
The company has good reason to defend its popular product: More than 100,000 Model 700 rifles are sold annually, at an average cost of $500. That accounts for an estimated $58 million of the company's $370 million in annual revenues. Today, nearly 3 million such rifles in 21 different calibers are in consumers' hands.
In addition to the NBAR evidence, internal corporate documents first disclosed in the Collins case show Remington may have known as early as 1975 that its rifle could accidentally discharge. That's when the company first began investigating customer and retailer complaints about malfunctions, according to Remington records. In a Dec. 8, 1987, letter, Nina Dula of Lenoir, N.C., complained that a rifle in the front seat of a Jeep discharged when a neighbor kicked a tire. She didn't report the accident to the company until the rifle fired inadvertently a second time. "In both instances, the trigger was never touched," wrote Dula.
Remington investigated Dula's complaint and determined the rifle functioned properly. The company wrote to Dula on Jan. 8, 1988: "The only manner in which the rifle could be made to fire was with the safety off and the trigger pulled." In 52 other responses to customer complaints BUSINESS WEEK reviewed, Remington either said it "cannot duplicate customer complaint" or concluded the owner unknowingly pulled the trigger.
In a 1979 internal memo, however, Remington's product-safety subcommittee stated that, based on tests of returned rifles, 1% of the 2 million pre-1975 Model 700s could be "tricked" into firing. The panel considered a recall but concluded the discharges were "more associated with abnormal use or misuse of the product rather than indication of a defective product," according to the memo. Instead, the subcommittee recommended issuing a statement to customers on proper gun handling. "The recall would have to gather 2 million guns just to find 20,000 that are susceptible to this condition," wrote the panel, noting "a large percentage of competitor's models can be tricked."
Eighteen months later, Fred Martin, a Remington field-service specialist, urged officials to make changes in newly manufactured rifles. His estimated cost: 32 a gun. "I feel we should not pass up this opportunity to improve our fire control," Martin wrote in a 1981 internal memo that was first used as evidence against Remington in the Collins case.
TRIGGER COMPLACENT. Remington did make one modification in 1982: The company eliminated the bolt lock, which had required the shooter to take the safety off to load and unload the rifle. But Remington says the change wasn't for safety's sake. "The removal of the bolt lock in 1982 was due to customer preference. This was not at all related to a safety issue," says Soucy. Still, the adjustment decreased reports of accidents.
Remington did not address what some experts say is the gun's most serious defect: an unreliable trigger connector. They say this causes the rifle to fire when the safety is released or when the bolt is opened or closed. "No other manufacturer utilizes a resiliently mounted trigger connector of this type," says Tom Butters, a gun expert in Houston who has testified against Remington. "Other trigger designs are much less likely to be involved in a malfunction."
Remington disputes Butters' assessment and says its trigger design is entirely safe and one of the most attractive features of the Model 700. "The Model 700 is one of the real pillars of this design," says Soucy. "The trigger is light in pull. You can check with most gun writers and find that this feature makes the gun one of the most desirable."
Firearms are one of the few consumer products for which regulators do not have authority to set design and safety standards--even though guns cause more accidental deaths than any other consumer product. Firearms accounted for 1,416 such fatalities in 1990, according to the National Safety Council, a nonprofit group in Itasca, Ill. By contrast, deaths from all other sports equipment or recreational activities totaled 1,220, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Assn. are opposed to current efforts toward tighter regulation. But consumer activists hope the public's growing concern over guns will compel lawmakers to adopt stricter standards. For now, consumers' only recourse is a legal one--and it looks like they plan to use it.
Loren Berger in Washington
