The Volokh Conspiracy
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Design Defect Claim That Sig Sauer Fired Without Trigger Pull Not Necessarily Blocked by Second Amendment
From Judge Thomas Thrash (N.D. Ga.) Friday in Harvard v. Sig Sauer, Inc.; note that Harvard is just plaintiff's last name:
This is a firearm design defect case. The Sig Sauer P365X pistol is a striker-fired pistol, which uses an internal, spring-loaded firing pin to hit the primer and fire the cartridge instead of an external hammer like a traditional gun. When the slide is racked back and released forward to chamber a round, the firing pin remains back and under spring tension, making it ready to fire. The firearm did not feature a manual safety. Nonetheless, the Defendant designed, manufactured, and sold the firearm and advertised it as a firearm that was equipped with the necessary features to prevent unintentional discharges.
The Plaintiff is an individual who purchased a Sig Sauer P365X on November 18, 2023. A month later, the Plaintiff was at the Rock Bottom Hunting Club in Roberta, Georgia with the firearm in his possession. The firearm was fully seated and properly secured in a holster, which was attached to the Plaintiff's belt on his waistband. At some point, the Plaintiff proceeded to remove the holster, with the firearm inside it from his waistband, using his left hand to relieve the tension from the holster clip. The Plaintiff held the holster with his right hand, with his hand positioned over the muzzle end of the holster.
After the holster was removed and while the Plaintiff was holding it, the firearm suddenly discharged without the Plaintiff touching the trigger or taking any action to cause it to discharge. The firearm remained fully seated inside the holster at the time of discharge. Additionally, the shell casing did not eject from the firearm during the time of discharge, remaining in the chamber. The discharge caused severe and permanent injury to the Plaintiff's right index finger near the middle joint. Despite having knowledge of incidents like the one suffered by the Plaintiff at the time of the injury, the Defendant continued to make the firearm available for purchase without a manual safety and never issued a mandatory recall of the firearm.
Plaintiff sued for design defect product liability, failure to warn, and negligence, and the court allowed the case to go forward, rejecting Sig Sauer's Second Amendment defense, at least at this stage (a motion to dismiss):
The Court must determine whether the Plaintiff's design defect claims, and any subsequent decision by this Court, could infringe on the fundamental right to bear arms enshrined within the Second Amendment. See Bruen ("[W]e hold that when the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct."); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) (holding, in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment, that a rule of decision imposed by a court based on state or common law in a private action is reviewable for constitutionality). After all, the Plaintiff's suit is not a firearm regulation imposed by the government. However, Georgia courts have acknowledged that, in order to resolve a design defect case, "the court is called upon to supply the standard for defectiveness." Because the answer is not apparent like in most other Second Amendment cases, the Court addresses it herein….
[Under Georgia design defect liability law], "the factfinder performs a 'risk-utility analysis,' assessing 'the reasonableness of choosing from among various alternative product designs' by asking whether 'the risk of harm outweighs the utility of a particular design' to determine whether 'the product is not as safe as it should be.'" "In addition to proving that a product was defectively designed, a plaintiff seeking to hold a manufacturer liable for a design defect must show that the defect proximately caused the plaintiff's injury." Ultimately, the question of whether a manufacturer breached its design duty "turns on whether it 'failed to adopt a reasonable, safer design that would have reduced the foreseeable risks of harm presented by the product.'" …
[T]he Defendant argues that the Plaintiff's design defect claims amount to a de facto ban of purchasing handguns without an external safety, which runs antithetical to the Second Amendment….
[But] in the relevant section of the Amended Complaint, the Plaintiff asserts that there is a design defect within the firearm arising from internal defective components and that the Defendant was on notice of this defect. It is this defect that caused the firearm to spontaneously discharge and cause the Plaintiff's injury.
It is only later that the Plaintiff suggests that the addition of an external safety could have significantly reduced the risk of misfire from defective components. This paragraph was likely included to demonstrate, at the pleading stage, that a "reasonable, safer design" could have been adopted by the Defendant to reduce the risk of misfires arising from internal defects. There is little indication within the Amended Complaint that the Plaintiff considers the lack of an external manual safety the defective part of the Gun, especially when the Plaintiff emphasizes that the Defendant marketed the firearm as one with the necessary internal features to prevent unintentional discharges….
But this discussion does not foreclose the Defendant from raising its Second Amendment argument at a later stage of the litigation. After discovery, if it becomes clear that there are no internal design defects present within the firearm, then the only design defect that could be construed from the Amended Complaint would be the lack of an external manual safety. And, in that case, the Defendant might plausibly assert that the Plaintiff's design defect claims infringe on the Second Amendment. This is because, if the Plaintiff prevails, then judicial action could reasonably be interpreted to impose liability on all manufacturers that produce guns similar to the P365X. In any case, the Court will not endeavor to analyze the issue at this time….
Brendan Gerard Krasinski and Darl Champion (The Champion Firm, Personal Injury Attorneys, P.C.) represent plaintiff.
