Then Freedom Group-owned Remington announced a recall of their iconic Model 700 and Model Seven rifles back in 2014. The list of covered rifles eventually grew to include other similar rifle models made with the X-Mark Pro trigger.
The inevitable class action suit ultimately covered about 7.5 million rifles. A settlement agreement was eventually reached, but it was disputed by some of the class members. Earlier this week, though, the plaintiffs declined to take the case to the US Supreme Court at the settlement became final.
That means that millions of owners of the iconic Model 700 rifle — and a dozen Remington models with similar designs — have 18 months to file claims for a free replacement of their guns’ allegedly defective triggers. The guns have been linked in lawsuits to dozens of accidental deaths and hundreds of serious injuries, though Remington still maintains they are safe.
“Anyone with one of these guns should take advantage of this opportunity to get the trigger fixed,” said Eric D. Holland, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the class action case. “I’ve encouraged everyone to put these guns away. Don’t use these guns. Make the claims now.”
Owners of the rifles can find claim submission instructions at Remington’s web site.
The settlement covers:
- Current owners of Remington Model 700, Seven, Sportsman 78, 673, 710, 715, 770, 600, 660, XP-100, 721, 722, and 725 firearms containing a Remington trigger mechanism that utilizes a trigger connector;
- Current owners of Remington Model 700 and Model Seven rifles containing an X-Mark Pro trigger mechanism manufactured from May 1, 2006 to April 9, 2014 who did not participate in the voluntary X-Mark Pro product recall prior to April 14, 2015; and
- Current and former owners of Remington Model 700 and Model Seven rifles who replaced their rifle’s original Walker trigger mechanism with an X-Mark Pro trigger mechanism.
WHAT DOES THE SETTLEMENT PROVIDE?
Settlement Class Members may be entitled to: (1) have their trigger mechanism retrofitted with a new X-Mark Pro or other connectorless trigger mechanism at no cost to the class members; (2) receive a voucher code for Remington products redeemable at Remington’s online store; and/or (3) be refunded the money they spent to replace their Model 700 or Seven’s original Walker trigger mechanism with an X-Mark Pro trigger mechanism.
See the Remington class action settlement web site for more details.
I did the math on this back in the early days. Remington can’t afford it, and even if they were given the money, it would take a decade and/or hiring 1000 staffers.
If this is the final settlement, Remington is counting on that time window to limit their exposure.
Of course, if you have a 700 series and you haven’t updated the trigger, it’s all on you. This has been a widely known issue since the early 1970s.
Most of these guns will never take part in the recall. Guns get rusted, lost, stolen, turned into wall hangers, forgotten, or upgraded to different aftermarket triggers.
There was actually some legal kerfuffle over the abysmal rate at which people were actually participating in the recall.
had one that did this. dad had it fixed back in the 80’s.
By coincidence I tried this week to have the trigger on a Rem 600 fixed. Remington would not do it but sent me to their folks handling the recall. All they offered me was enough money in Remington merchandise to buy a hat with the Remington logo.
How is this right? A dangerous gun and all they will do is give me something to further advertise their products?
If anybody has more info on how to get this gun fixed or has more juice with Remington, let me know.
post it on gunbroker and your problem will disappear.
If you’d like some light reading on the subject, here’s ‘Lewy v. Remington’ from 1987.
https://cyber.harvard.edu/digitaldiscovery/library/spoliation/lewy.html
The case was settled in favor of the Plaintiff Lewy, who sued Remington over a 700 Walker-triggered model’s inadvertent discharge; During the litigation, the Plaintiffs attempted to introduce the history of the Remington 600 (which has an identical Walker trigger design, just a smidge smaller overall) and its proclivity for unintended discharges, which evidence was ruled inadmissible because the Plaintiff hadn’t proven to the Court that the two trigger designs were, for all practical purposes, identical, and therefore evidence of Model 600 trigger failures couldn’t be used to ‘prove’ that Model 700 triggers failed.
So, despite the triggers being virtually identical, a court has ruled that the Model 600 is NOT the same as a Model 700 (although the 700’s identical Walker trigger IS defective) and therefore. . .Remington has an ‘out.’ And you are screwed–unless you can afford a good attorney to start over again.
Now, out of the sheer kindness of their hearts, Remington has agreed, just to be fair, that they will ‘recall’ the Model 600/660/673 guns–except, the total extent of ‘repairs’ that they will do will be to provide you with a lovely $12.50 gift certificate, good for absolutely any Remington goodies you could desire that cost up to $12.50.
I suggest putting your new $12.50 Remington ball cap over the muzzle of the gun before you apply or take off the safety, or before raising the bolt handle, or before closing the bolt. It will help muffle the sound a bit.
For what it is worth…. warrantees often stipulate that a product must exactly match the model number. One number or letter different vacates the warrantee. You find the same thing when a sale ad says that if you can find the product for less they’ll give you the difference. Then you show them an ad and they point out that the model number is different.
Had one for years and didn’t see this problem. Maybe mine was dirty or broken.
I’ve had dozens of 700s/721s. Never had the problem. But then, I never expect a mechanical safety to function. I have seen this with Savage safeties. It’s not that they will fire on safe, it’s that sometimes, after having the trigger pulled or struck while on safe, the piece fires when the safety is switched off. Such a problem is not possible for me, as I rarely use the safety on a boltgun anyway. Instead, I slip the bolt up and out of battery. Much more safe than any gimmick and just as fast to bring back into action. Plus the bolt can be slowly lowered in complete silence when necessary, unlike the actual safety.
Safety is not a lever or a switch. It’s an attitude and it exists only between your ears. Well, between SOME people’s ears.
You have missed one of the salient failure modes for the Remington Walker-triggered guns, and that is Fire On Bolt Lift/Bolt Close.
You are not ‘safe’ if you do not rely upon the manual safety. The gun is capable of firing through simple movement of the bolt handle, no matter what position the ‘safety’ may be in–the ‘safety’ can be completely REMOVED, and the failure is still possible. You could saw off the trigger shoe, and STILL the gun can fire. It’s all internal, and it’s a design failure of the worst type.
HOW IT HAPPENS: With a Walker trigger, the sear is held in the cocked position by the tiny interface between the top of the trigger connector piece (that ‘floats’ on the trigger body but isn’t physically attached to it AT ALL) and the bottom of the sear. If the connector is in its proper place, the interface between the sear and connector is sufficient to hold the sear up. HOWEVER: If the connector does NOT return to its proper position on the front of the trigger body, and the interface area between the connector and the sear is diminished enough, the effect is to have the sear propped up with only the tiniest amount of surface area between it and the connector–so that, when the bolt is moved, the sear falls as the connector ‘squirts’ out from under the sear and off of the trigger body, causing the striker to fall to fire the gun.
THIS IS NOT A GUNSMITHING ERROR, OR AN “ADJUSTMENT’ ERROR; It is due to the fact that the connector is NOT rigidly affixed to the trigger body, and is only returned to its proper position by a very small spring that MAY not be enough to do the job, OR if debris or congealed oil or pocket lint or whatever comes between the connector and the trigger body, preventing proper seating.
Now, ‘bad gunsmithing’ or ‘maladjustment’ can increase the chances of this happening, but the fault remains with the design.
Not all of the guns will do this; Very few actually DO. The ones that DO are deadly. And there’s no predicting which ones will do it: The guns may function perfectly for their entire useful lives, or they may fail randomly at any time, never to repeat the failure. One day the gun will fire on bolt lift or bolt close, and the next day it won’t.
PLEASE, Folks, DO find or download a copy of the book “UNSAFE BY DESIGN” by Jack Belk. The story is all in there, ready to prove to you just how much of a fraud this settlement IS and how dangerous is the design.
Now, you can believe what you wish.
Oh, that phenomenon you’re talking about is called ‘tricking.’ Almost any bolt gun with an override trigger (virtually every modern design) is subject to this failure. It’s why you do NOT ‘test’ the safety mechanism by pulling the trigger on a loaded gun. If you must, ‘test’ it on an empty chamber. . .
It’s set up by cocking the striker, putting the safety ‘on,’ and then pressing the trigger. When the trigger is pressed, sometimes only a small amount, the trigger (which is supposed to be propping up the sear) is moved from beneath the sear, so that the only thing holding the sear up is the safety cam. Move the safety cam out of the way by taking the safety off, and there’s no longer anything propping up the sear–and the gun fires.
It’s called ‘FSR’ or ‘Fire on Safety Release,’ technically, but it’s not really a ‘defect’ if YOU make the trigger and safety do something that it’s not designed to do. Nobody’s instruction manual recommends that you ‘test’ the safety by pulling the trigger on a live round. . .
Remington Walker triggers, unfortunately, do this ‘FSR’ thing without any ‘tricking’ necessary. In their case, it’s a design defect, and not a quirk of most override triggers that can be blamed on the shooter.
By the way, you can’t ‘trick’ a 98 Mauser, an original Winchester 70, or any other bolt-action design with a ‘direct-acting’ trigger, which includes most old military designs. These things may be creepy, gritty monsters, but they’re SAFE.
Modern day Remington products are garbage. I wish Savage would buy the rights to their 700 line when Remington goes bankrupt. That platform is very mature, but it needs updates such as QC,the Trigger, and how barrels are mounted to the receiver. The barrels are mounted in a way that you need a gun smith, not so with Savage guns. Look up Remage barrels. Ideally Savage would update the gun so that the 700 truly becomes the ar-15 of the bolt gun world.
I think the Savage 110 series is already heading there.
What about the thousands of us that said no thanks to Remington and put in Timney triggers? I’m not going to spend good money on something that’s supposed to be done correctly, only to find out later it wasn’t, and hope they can get it right this time. Guess we don’t even fall into the…… here’s you some free shit so now shut up category.
Yup. We got screwed. I replaced both of mine with Timneys.
Consider yourself wise, and fortunate.
Remington will NOT reimburse you for any trigger replacement that wasn’t done with a Remington X-Mark trigger–a device that’s already getting Remington sued for inadvertent discharges, by the way.
At least you you have a safe, reliable trigger now.
This is good news, finally. I have had a case number assigned to my rifle ( ADL 30 06) for a number of years now. I’ve called Remington customer service twice a year for updates only to receive the same response, “hang on, the matter remains in the courts.” The big decision was supposed to have came about in February 2016 only to be delayed until seemingly now. I’ll call on Monday, but, won’t hold my breath.
This is NOT ‘good news;’ It’s a fraud.
You CAN get your trigger replaced, IF you’re willing to accept an X-Mark Pro that has a proven failure mode; You CAN get a gift certificate for a $12.50 Remington ball cap. Or, you CAN get absolutely nothing, unless you’ve already replaced ;your Walker trigger with an X-Mark Pro (see above) in which case you get back the cost of that ‘upgrade’. Or you can get literally absolutely nothing, if you have an older rifle, or a Model 600, or one of the other guns with a Walker trigger that isn’t included in the Recall, such as any of the Police models or guns sold Overseas.
Other than THAT, this is a GREAT deal. . . /sarc.
I have 2 model 700 LH in 270 and Rem 7 mag . A 1987 and a 1994 . How can I tell if my trigger needs to be replaced ?
I see the dates now . Looks like I’m good to go .
After doing more research I’m not so sure if my 2 model 700 BDL’s need the trigger replaced or not ? They both have the original trigger . My 270 is a 1987 model and the Rem 7mag is a 1994 . I’m sure a lot of you have way more info on this then me and any advice would be appreciated !
Thanks !
Carl
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