Jake Fogelman at The Reload is reporting that a Kentucky man who claims his holstered pistol fired on its own and wounded him can proceed with his lawsuit against firearm manufacturer Sig Sauer, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday in Davis v. Sig Sauer that a lower court erred in dismissing Timothy Davis’s product liability claims against Sig Sauer. The ruling, first reported by The Reload, found that the district court wrongly barred Davis from using expert witnesses to support his claim that the P320 handgun was defectively designed due to its lack of external safety mechanisms.
“Although the district court correctly excluded Davis’s experts from testifying about what exactly caused Davis’s P320 to fire inadvertently, the experts’ opinions were otherwise admissible to prove other elements of Davis’s claims—specifically that the P320 is defectively designed and that reasonable alternative designs exist,” Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote in the majority opinion.
Davis’s lawsuit stems from a January 2021 incident in which he was shot in the leg while getting out of his truck. He claims the gun discharged while fully holstered, without him pulling the trigger. However, law enforcement responding to the scene reported that Davis told officers he was attempting to holster the weapon when it discharged, a key discrepancy in the case.
Davis sued Sig Sauer in 2022, arguing that the P320’s lack of external safety features, such as a thumb or grip safety, made it unreasonably dangerous. His legal team enlisted a gunsmith and a risk-analysis expert who contended that the firearm’s design increased the likelihood of unintended discharges. The district court excluded their testimony as speculative and dismissed the case.
The appellate court reversed that decision, allowing the experts to testify on design flaws and alternative safety mechanisms. However, Judge Amul Thapar dissented, arguing that Davis’s failure to provide expert testimony on causation should have been fatal to his claim.
“In a complex product defect case, Kentucky requires a plaintiff to present expert testimony showing both that there’s a defect and the defect caused his injury,” Thapar wrote. “But Davis didn’t present expert testimony on causation. Thus, his product defect claim should fail.”
Thapar also emphasized that Davis knowingly purchased and carried a version of the P320 without a manual safety, a common feature of modern defensive firearms.
“That’s a feature, not a bug,” he noted, pointing out that Sig Sauer offers models with external safeties for those who prefer them.
Despite the dissent, the ruling allows Davis to take his claims before a jury, adding to a continued legal battle over the P320’s safety. Last year, Sig Sauer lost two jury verdicts related to similar claims, including an $11 million award in Philadelphia and a $2.3 million verdict in Georgia. The company is currently appealing both decisions.
The P320 is arguably one of the most popular handguns in the United States with many outlets noting it remains one of their top selling pistols and is widely used by both civilians and law enforcement agencies. It has been adopted as the standard-issue sidearm for the U.S. military in various variants and is also standard issue in othe militaries and law enforcement agencies around the world.
“The P320 is one of the nation’s most popular handguns. A variant of the weapon is the standard-issue sidearm for every branch of the U.S. military. Since the gun’s introduction to the commercial market in 2014, manufacturer SIG Sauer has sold the P320 to hundreds of thousands of civilians, and it has been used by officers at more than a thousand law enforcement agencies across the nation, court records show,” The Washington Post wrote in a 2023 article about the lawsuits.
The case now returns to the Kentucky District Court, where a jury will ultimately determine whether Sig Sauer bears responsibility for Davis’s injury.
I’m more inclined to believe that the firearm went off as he was improperly holstering it…
Ditto, and while trying to carry other items from the car at the same time.
Ok, let me get this straight. Dude bought a pistol with no external safety. Then is driving with gun upholstered, gets home, shoots self while fumblefucking gun in holster, sues Sig because he’s a dumbass.
Is that about right
wait, the gun was unupholstered? he should have used a scrap from his fainting couch.
lol
I recently traded off my last pistol without a manual safety – a nice canik SFx that I otherwise loved due to it being “oddball” from the rest of what I own…maybe the guy suing SIG should have bought the one offered with a safety, or practiced safe handling of the one he got without it.
Loser sees other lawsuits awarded so it’s monkey see monkey do. Like mexico is doing after seeing Remington cave to plaintiffs in the CT lawsuit all while the guility were those who invited trouble in with their criminal coddling Gun Free Zone signs.
REmington was gone. It’s insurer who would have had to pay any damages award decided to cut bait and save money by settling. The courts had given plaintiffs so much leeway in discovery that it was going to cost millions just to get to trial.
My theory is nobody ever said; “the 1911 discharged while fully holstered, without him pulling the trigger.”
But WTH, it’s only been 115 yrs, give or take, so who knows what tomorrow may bring. After all, it’s just a theory.
A lot of fanboys came to Remington’s defense over their Walker triggers and blamed the users too. I’m keeping an open mind.
Pretty much the same. The design had issues in various iterations and while I like it enough to own one it has different uses than what I typically use for carry.
Sig has had Plenty of QC issues in my short 13 years as a gat owner. 365 problems & 320 stuff. Glad I didn’t get that used 320 from my favorite pawnshop.
Anything made by humans can fail.
It always possible that this particular gun had an issue.
The 320 in general very likely doesn’t at this point. It’s been tested by hundreds of thousands of civilians, and it has been used by officers at more than a thousand law enforcement agencies across the nation.
This is kinda like that meme about gun owners. We’ve got 400 million guns and [some absurd amount] of ammo. If we were a problem, you’d know it.
There haven’t been a rash of people shooting themselves with the 320 even though huge numbers of people own them. Given a normal distribution we can safely say that several tens of thousands of outright morons own them, yet they’re not shooting themselves with the pistol.
So, if the gun’s been tested by the subhuman moron cohort and passed… that kinda leaves this guy in a very *special* position or he got a gun with a QC flaw that’s extremely rare.
The stupid gun experts decided to allow a known gun with defects to stay on the market. And only asked for a voluntary recall of their defective product.
If this had been Hi Point I would never end of the jokes and snide remarks.
Sig Sauer thinks they are bulletproof. But they have insurance company coverage just like Remington did. Before they were sued out of business.
It was not sued out of existence. The piss poor management of its corporate parent caused it to fail.
The management forgot they had insurance companies they had to keep happy. Also I assume they didn’t listen to their own lawyers.
I wonder if the Sig lawyers advised the management to recall the P320. And they decided against a mandatory recall. And ignore their own lawyers.
This guy most likely caused his own ND. But Sig Sauer decided to ignore their own QC issues. And a low IQ jury will act accordingly.
Second Amendment Preservation Act Is Back!!!
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUx27tK8A28
Federal Court To Decide: Do Illegal Immigrants Have 2nd Amendment Rights?
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Lmg8ER5ks
It’s fun to watch the left squirm on this one… they have supposed birth rights, job rights, sanctuary rights, welfare card rights, driving rights, home-ownership rights, privacy rights, the right to remain silent rights – so yeah, how about giving them a right that the left doesn’t even want REAL citizens to have.
They already did in the places where they allow them to become local LE.
“It’s fun to watch the left squirm on this one… “
No squirming here… I think the constitution is clear, especially in the second amendment’s wording ‘people’ as opposed to ‘citizen’.
And the constitution’s Militia Clause codifies the fact that non-citizens are members of the Militia.
In the United States of America, the rights are granted to ‘people’ not just ‘citizens’.
Ok 2 on my bingo card, narrative shift.
Davis sued Sig Sauer in 2022, arguing that the P320’s lack of external safety features, such as a thumb or grip safety, made it unreasonably dangerous.
It’s things like this that make me really rather dislike people in general.
It’s not like Sig hid the fact that the gun didn’t have a thumb or grip safety. That was actually kind of billed as a feature. So, the real question is if it’s so unreasonably dangerous, why’d this idiot knowingly buy it?
Bro, you had an ND and shot yourself. It’s on you. And there’s probably still some fragments in you.
Next time, just suck start that thing and save us all a the trouble, please and thank you.
The P320 was the low bidder which minimally met the specification under the Federal Acquisition Requirements. The price was less than a High Point at $185. SOCOM bought Glock because it’s a superior military pistol used by allies worldwide. Suckers buy i320s for $600, as SiG thinks we’re too dumb to know the super innovative drop in fire control is from the French 1935.
Just laugh when SiG calls it the “Chosen One”
You do realize that the MHS requirements were written around the SIG P250, right? They knew what they wanted beforehand, and the G19X is a joke.
The first thing I thought of when reading the article was that the expert testimony that was going to be allowed did not address causation. Glad to see that one of the appeals justices was thinking the same thing. It was the same with the Remington case. Plaintiffs wanted to delve into every advertisement that Remington had published for decades, but ignored the fact that they could not show that the shooter had even seen a Remington ad as a reason for buying this rifle, especially since he had not purchased it in the first place.
Massive element of causation necessary for their case. Not that this has stopped any of the follow on cases.
I’ve seen some interested videos on the subject that lends some credence to these reports. Not 100% convinced yet, but it does seem that there was problems in manufacturing that may have lead to “triggerpullless” (is that a word) discharges of the pistol
Not sure we can keep going with, “it was a negligent discharge” with 100% certainty any longer.
how many videos of this firing without a trigger pull do you people need to see before you can admit there is a problem. denial is not just a river in egypt.