Why is remington under fire

A landmark class action settlement involving some of Remington's most popular firearms has officially gone into effect. A three-judge panel of the 8th U. Circuit Court of Appeals has approved a class action settlement in which Remington Arms Company has agreed to replace the trigger mechanisms in millions of guns. Plaintiffs claim Remington covered up a deadly design defect that allowed some of its rifles to fire without the trigger being pulled.

Two owners of allegedly defective Remington rifles say they'll seek to block a landmark class action settlement approved by a federal judge. The landmark class action settlement involves some 7.

The federal judge considering the settlement is raising concerns over the number of gun owners who have filed claims to get their guns fixed. The company said that its critics have "ulterior motives" in objecting the deal. Owners of Remington's popular Model rifle can now examine for themselves literally millions of pages of internal company documents. A proposed plan to replace the triggers in allegedly defective Remington rifles is "designed to fail," an expert on class action settlements said.

Remington plans to use social media and talk-radio to help publicize its offer to replace the triggers in allegedly defective rifles. A landmark legal settlement to replace the triggers in millions of allegedly defective Remington rifles is on increasingly shaky ground, CNBC has learned.

A judge has given Remington a day extension to come up with a plan to notify gun owners about a program to fix allegedly defective firearms. A federal judge has agreed to further delay a class-action settlement involving Remington rifles to allow more time to develop a better plan to alert the public. Mike Walker died a few years ago, but a deposition — never seen before — sheds fresh light on problems with the trigger he invented.

Guns are among the only consumer products for which the government cannot order a recall, leaving it up to manufacturers to police themselves. A settlement covering 7. Here's what you need to know.

CNBC's Scott Cohn examines allegations the Remington Model series hunting rifle is prone to firing without pulling the trigger, and that its manufacturer, Remington, has been aware of this concern for almost 60 years.

Dozens of deaths, scores of injuries, and more than a thousand customer complaints have been linked to the alleged problem. This original documentary aired on Wednesday, October 20th, CNBC's month investigation stretched from Florida to Alaska, turning up thousands of complaints, two dozen deaths, more than injuries and plus lawsuits, all alleging the gun fired without the trigger being pulled. Remington has consistently stated the deaths and injuries involving its bolt-action series rifles were the result of poor maintenance or unsafe handling Volcanic activity beneath Iwo Jima, site of a defining World War II battle, is pushing sunken naval vessels to the surface.

A new hotline and a more comprehensive, comparative claims processing system are among the efforts to assist Gulf War and Two Russian Tu strategic bombers reportedly practiced bombing runs at the Ruzany firing range, about 37 miles east of the At least five service members allegedly were part of the deadly pro-Trump mob that assaulted the U. Capitol on Jan. The committees also found the Mar-a-Lago members exerted dominance over White House staff who were tasked with implementing While the involvement of Saudi and Israeli fighters in the same mission is significant, that development does not necessarily Barber calls that exchange "hurtful.

Chen told CNBC she has nothing to add. In another outtake, Schauble and Chen discuss how much sympathy to show toward the Barber family, who were central figures in the CNBC program. Chen suggests Schauble reference the Ten Commandments of Firearm Safety, which Remington contends will prevent all firearm injuries. In the edited video, Schauble proclaims his "deepest sorrow" for the Barbers, but the response goes on to suggest that the condition of the rifle may have been to blame for the accident.

Barber sued Remington for defamation over the response, but a court dismissed the case earlier this year after ruling that as part of the wrongful death settlement, the Barbers had released the company from further claims. Also left on the cutting room floor: Schauble and Chen wrestling with how to handle year-old Mike Walker, the Remington engineer who had told CNBC he proposed a safer design for his firing mechanism only to have it rejected because of the cost.

Chen had also attempted to interview Walker following the CNBC program, but he does not appear in the response video. Schauble suggests describing the CNBC interview as an ambush, even though Walker had invited us to his home, a single-family unit in a North Carolina retirement community. She says Walker had spent "more than half the time" in her interview talking negatively about Remington. But one would not know that from the edited video. He's a revered employee.

We feel it's irresponsible that CNBC cornered the man and tried to get him to say things that were bad about Remington. Walker died in at age , but not before giving a videotaped deposition for attorneys in the pending liability cases.

Under oath in , he confirms that he had proposed an alternative design, and also notes that he complained that the metal Remington was using in some of the parts was not durable enough. But he also testifies he never personally saw a bad safety in the rifles he designed, and accuses Rich Barber of misleading him about the number of incidents — an allegation Barber denies.

Those documents paint the picture of a company well-aware of the thousands of customer complaints about unintended firings of the popular rifles, and wrestling internally over what to do about the issue.

Some of the documents appear on DuPont stationery with an imprint that seems almost quaint by today's Internet age standard: "Don't Say it, Write it. Like any manufacturer, Remington had to weigh the sometimes-competing goals of safety, customer satisfaction and profits.

Often, it seems, profits won out. As CNBC reported in , Remington routinely instructed its customer service representatives not to let on to complaining customers that others had contacted the company about the same issue.

But the documents reveal that Remington's public statements have gone well beyond just limiting the flow of information. In addition, the company said, "Both Remington and experts hired by plaintiff attorneys have conducted testing on guns returned from the field which were alleged to have fired without a trigger pull, and neither has ever been able to duplicate such an event on guns which had been properly maintained and which had not been altered after sale.

White Laboratory , an independent, Maryland-based ballistics testing firm. Researchers were evaluating a proposed modification of the Model firing mechanism, and comparing it to the existing design. One of the tests involved blowing sand and dust into the mechanism to simulate conditions in the field.

The researchers say the guns performed normally during the test, so the debris had no effect on safety during the firing sequence. But as the guns were being cleaned following that test, two of them — one with the modification and one without — inadvertently fired, according to the report. But researchers could not get the malfunction to happen again, which they concluded was because the firing itself, and recycling the bolt, cleared the debris.

It is exactly the theory that plaintiffs' experts have alleged for years, and might explain Remington's claim that it has been unable to duplicate the problem on guns that have been returned. A finding by an independent ballistics laboratory that Remington Model rifles can inadvertently fire at random might be of interest to plaintiffs in other cases, not to mention the millions of people who own the guns. But the study was hidden from the public until now.

It surfaced briefly in a lawsuit against Remington by a Texas man, Trevor Williams, who was severely injured when a friend's Model rifle went off during a hunting trip. By taking the deal, however, Williams and his attorneys agreed to keep all of the documents Remington had produced secret — including the lab report — under a protective order both sides agreed to early in the case.

The documents also include dozens of inspection reports on guns that had been returned by customers who complained they had malfunctioned. While records show most of the allegedly defective guns returned to Remington had indeed been altered or adjusted by the customer, a "plant audit" conducted by the company reveals 22 instances in an month period in which guns could be made to go off without pulling the trigger "because of causes due to manufacture.

And that is only based on guns that customers returned to the company. The memo notes that Remington had decided a year earlier to launch a gun safety campaign rather than recall the Model The document — which appears to contradict Remington's claim that every inadvertent firing is the result of user error — turned up in a class-action suit by an Oklahoma man, Jantz Kinzer, who claimed his Model rifle was defective.

The case was eventually dismissed, and the memo remained hidden until now by a protective order. Our investigation found 15 cases in which courts sanctioned Remington for abusing the discovery process — dragging its feet, or not turning over evidence despite court orders to do so. On at least one occasion, in , a California state judge found the company in contempt of court for "a flagrant disregard of the law, which has caused a waste of judicial and legal time, has been obstructive and offensive to the administration of justice, and unfair to the other litigants herein.

But Remington is taking it to a whole different level. That includes a novel argument in a case: that the company's penchant for secrecy would actually make its products safer. That was Remington's position in court papers filed after a plaintiff demanded that the company turn over information about a program to design a new bolt-action rifle as an alternative to the The argument went all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, but ultimately it didn't fly.

Collins' attorneys had argued the design program was proof that Remington knew its rifle was flawed. It remains the largest verdict ever against Remington in a Model case, but the company still would not change the design. Despite its warnings in the Collins case that disclosure would be bad for product safety, Remington did not stop developing new products or researching alternative designs for the series firing mechanism.

The newly unsealed documents show multiple proposed design changes dating back to the s. They include the alternative design for the safety proposed by Mike Walker himself before the gun went on the market, as well as guns that did away with the controversial trigger connector, and guns that included a secondary safety.

But even as customer complaints and lawsuits piled up, the company stuck by the Walker trigger, insisting to this day that it is safe. The newly public documents offer one possible reason the company might be reluctant to change a product's design: it could hurt Remington in court.

Handwritten notes from Remington engineers show the legal department heavily involved throughout the design process, even insisting in that meeting that the redesign carry a different model number so the company can continue to "defend" the existing design. And notes from on how to deal with the issue of "F. But a handwritten note inside a report describes the concern the most bluntly:.

But he asks if a design change could "also get us by the plaintiff attorneys saying 'you've changed so you're guilty'?

The fact that Remington is still insisting the rifles are safe, even as it agrees to replace as many as 7. He has been testifying as a paid expert against Remington in liability cases dating back to He was also a paid consultant to the plaintiffs in the Pollard class-action case, but says he was fired after 18 months when he began raising concerns about the proposed settlement. Now, Belk has filed a formal objection to the class-action settlement, calling it "a bad deal for the rifle owners of America.