Guns.com:

A federal judged ruled against Remington Arms in a personal injury case despite arguments that the gun maker is protected under Louisiana law.

Judge Ivan Lemelle ruled that the case has merit under the Louisiana Products Liability Act, saying the law protects gun makers from lawsuits except in cases involving a defective firearm. He awarded $500,000 to the plaintiff, Precious Seguin, for her claim holding Remington liable for producing a defective product.

According to court documents, Seguin was injured during a hunting excursion in October 2013. As she tracked the blood trail of a wounded deer with her father, brother and a family friend, her father’s Remington 710 bolt-action rifle discharged as they made their way through the brush. The bullet struck her right buttock, traveled through her hip and exited through her right elbow.

The lawsuit argues the rifle’s trigger design, the infamous Walker Fire Control, a mechanism that has been linked to almost a dozen deaths and numerous injuries, allowed the gun to discharge without the pull of a trigger. In Seguin’s case, her father had the rifle strapped over his shoulder and pointed upward until a branch knocked it up and backward, at which time the safety moved to the fire position and unintentionally discharged. Before Seguin was injured, they had not experienced an unintentional discharge with the rifle.

So this is more on the Walker Fire Control System.  Good grief, people.  I was among the most vocal critics of Remington on the gun blogs, using my engineering credentials to advocate that Remington had misled their constituency and gun buyers, and in fact they’re still lying.  The Remington 700 has indeed been tested to fire when the trigger isn’t being pulled.  Their own test data shows it.  Good Lord!  Their own test data shows it.

But how far do we take this?  Now that Remington has settled the issue in court, it’s finished.  Let it go.  Everyone who knows anything about guns – and you shouldn’t be a hunter if you don’t know anything about guns – knows what Remington has been charged with, and knows that Remington settled.

Legal settlements mean something or they don’t.  Besides, I don’t know what really happened on that day Seguin was injured since I wasn’t there, and neither do any of my readers, and neither does the idiot judge who ordered this payout.

It’s time to put this to bed.  It’s finished.  Buy Remington, or don’t.  It matters not to me.  But this issue is closed as far as I’m concerned.  I hope Remington’s lawyers end this swiftly and surely.  If they don’t, let me make it clear.  At this point I have no compassion left for people who want to sue Remington for damages from a trigger system that has been recalled.  Do your homework, people.

KRTV.com:

Over the years, Barber has amassed a mountain of documents, including internal memos from Remington and thousands of consumer complaints, that he said show that the company knew about the flaw with the trigger mechanism, known as the Walker Fire Control, and did nothing about it.

“I believe that I am quite capable of defending myself with Remington’s own documents, which speak for themselves and clearly speak volumes about what the company knew, when they knew it and what they did or did not do with that body of knowledge,” said Barber.

Remington has adamantly denied that the Walker Fire Control is defective. But the company has agreed to replace millions of trigger mechanisms in its top-selling bolt action rifles as part of a class-action lawsuit settlement

The details of the settlement are still being worked out in federal court and aren’t expected to be released until December of 2015. But we do know that Remington does not want the trigger replacement program to be labeled a recall. Also, part of the deal is that Remington does not have to admit that its products are defective or concede to wrongdoing.

That does not sit well with Barber.

“Until Remington at least quits denying a problem and wrongdoing, the cycle of death and injury will just continue,” said Barber.

Barber said he wants Remington to come clean about the history of problems with the model 700 rifle.

He showed MTN an internal memo from 1990 that says, “the number of model 700 rifles being returned to the factory because of alleged accidental firing malfunctions is constantly increasing.”

The memo was dated January 25 and already 29 rifles had been returned that month.

Barber also released to MTN a confidential document on testing done within Remington’s own facility. It advised the tester to wear a glove for protection and “be prepared for the rifle to inadvertently follow down or fire.”

“Remington goes as far as telling their own employees, as shown in that document, they warn them,” said Barber. “They tell them to be prepared for the gun to fire during testing, but yet they deny this fact to the public?”

They prepared their own gunsmiths to expect the rifle to “inadvertently fire” during testing.  I had not heard this before, even though I have linked a good bit of evidence (likely obtained initially by Barber) in previous posts.  It might actually have been interesting and enlightening for the case to go forward to court to see how Remington reacted.

I had also intended to mention that Jack Belk sent me his book (personally signed) entitled Unsafe by Design: Forensic Gunsmithing and Firearms Accident Investigations.  It’s written in a breezy, conversational style with lots of pictures and technical explanation.  The section on the Walker fire control system beckons me again, since it’s involved enough to read through a second time.  I highly recommend Jack’s book.