July 7, 2014 — Remington Arms Co. has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit alleging that the Walker Fire Control trigger on the Model 700 rifle is defective because it can fire unexpectedly.
The class action was filed in January 2013 in the U.S. District Court for Missouri by Ian Pollard. He alleges that Remington knew about the trigger problem for decades but failed to issue a recall:
“Defendants have known since 1979 that at least 1 percent of all Model 700 rifles at that time would ‘trick,’ allowing them to fire unexpectedly without a trigger pull … this percentage is vastly understated and that all Model 700 rifles are subject to unexpected firing without a trigger pull.”
Remington has been hit with at least three class actions and a number of individual lawsuits from people who were injured or killed.
The Missoulian interviewed Richard Barber, a man whose 9 year-old son was killed in a hunting accident in 2000, when a Model 700 rifle fired through a trailer and hit the boy on the other side. Barber has been investigating the defect for more than a decade and is now a consultant in the litigation.
The Walker Fire Control has been on the market since the 1940s. In 2006, Remington introduced a new fire-control mechanism, the X-Mark Pro (XMP). The Model 700 with XMP triggers were recalled in April 2014 because excess bonding agent could allow the gun to fire without pulling the trigger. Click here to read more.
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