When we last left the ongoing saga of claims that the P320 pistol is somehow unsafe, a small police department in Connecticut had made public a video of an officer’s duty gun discharging while he was involved in a tussle with a suspect. If you haven’t seen it, here it is . . .
Officer’s gun randomly goes off during arrest in Montville, CT.
It was a Sig and the chief has already ordered 35 new Glocks for the department.
What do you think caused that?
(No sound on the video) pic.twitter.com/ouql74tq3a— Donut Operator 🍩 (@DonutOperator) July 28, 2023
As SIG said at the time, the Montville Police Department refused to allow them to inspect the pistol, the holster, or any of the rest of the gear the officer was carrying at the time. Instead, they sent the P320 in question to their own forensic lab for examination and the chief announced publicly that he’d be spending $20,000 to switch to GLOCKs.
It’s strange, then, that we’ve heard nothing more from the Montville PD or their chief about what the forensic lab found. It seems a safe bet that if they’d somehow determined that it was possible for the P320 in the video to fire on its own, we’d have heard about it.
And if that had happened, it would have been the first time anyone has ever been able to demonstrate a P320 discharging without a trigger pull. Not that a lot of people haven’t tried.
Again, it’s difficult to tell definitively from that low res security video, but it appears that the cop in question was using a Safariland holster designed for light-bearing pistols. SIG SAUER claims from their examination of the video, the pistol wasn’t fully seated and the retention hood wasn’t closed. That’s hard to tell from our view, but OK.
What’s at least as likely a cause is the fact that, as others have demonstrated, given the naturally larger opening in light-bearing holsters, there’s significantly more room for keys, jacket cinch cords, or whatever to get in there. No matter what kind of pistol you’re carrying. See, for example, this . . .
That’s no doubt why SIG issued a press release earlier this month cautioning those who carry their P320 in light-bearing holsters.
None of this kind of information, however, tends to seep down into the danker bowels of the internet where there are plenty of people who claim their best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with a girl who saw a P320 just go off at 31 Flavors last night.
As we’ve stated in the past (see here, here, and here), there have been many attempts to claim in court that the P320 — we’re talking about the post-upgrade guns — is somehow prone to “un-commanded discharges.” We looked at the the circumstances surrounding a lot of those claims and found them questionable at best. Most of the cases looked to us to be the result of cops who’d had negligent discharges and were trying to avoid the embarrassment, being fired, or both.
Now, more than two years since our first post on the topic was published, more of these cases have had their days in court and have been resolved. Let’s see how that turned out . . .
Frankenberry v. SIG SAUER: An unholstered P320 carried in appendix position allegedly discharged without trigger pull while the owner pulled up his pants in the bathroom at a Chick-fil-A. RESULT: Summary judgement for SIG SAUER
Herman v. SIG SAUER: Plaintiff claims a P320 discharged without a trigger pull while drawing from appendix carry. RESULT: Summary judgement in favor of SIG SAUER
Schneider v. SIG SAUER: A P320 was being handed by the plaintiff to his wife when it allegedly “went off,” killing her. RESULT: Dismissed with prejudice by the plaintiff who was found criminally liable
Guay v. SIG SAUER: Plaintiff’s P320 allegedly discharged while holstered while he was removing it from his belt. RESULT: Unanimous jury verdict in favor of SIG
Mayes v. SIG SAUER: Plaintiff claims his P320 fired without drawing it from his holster while shooting at his farm. RESULT: Summary judgement in favor of SIG SAUER
Hilton v. SIG SAUER: This was the case that was highlighted by ABC News and prompted our first post on the P320 lawsuits here. The plaintiff claims she was carrying her P320 in a holster, in her purse when it discharged. RESULT: Summary judgement in favor of SIG SAUER
Collette v. SIG SAUER: Plaintiff claims his P320 discharged while being carried in a gym bag while “wrapped carefully in a cloth,” either a towel or t-shirt. RESULT: Dismissed with prejudice by plaintiff
Jinn v. SIG SAUER: Plaintiff claims his holstered P320 discharged while “his hand [was] on the weapon’s grip while holstered to begin the draw process” during Homeland Security tactical shooting qualifications. RESULT: Summary judgement in favor of SIG SAUER
These are all of the resolved cases that we have been able to find. You’ll notice a pattern here. First, no one has won a judgement yet. The company confirms that no one has ever won a judgement against them regarding the P320. The only case that has gone all the way to trial resulted in a unanimous jury verdict for the company.
You’ll also notice that most of these cases have been dismissed, either withdrawn by the plaintiff or on summary judgement. The reason for that is the same in virtually every case. The plaintiffs’ expert witnesses were determined by the judges to be either unreliable or their testimony inadmissible. And without expert witnesses who can show the P320 can discharge “un-commanded,” the plaintiffs didn’t have a case. In other words, there was no there there.
When it comes down to it, this is what has reinforced our opinion that the wave of lawsuits that have been filed are ultimately baseless. Like the Montville Police Department (we presume) no one has ever been able to show that a P320 will fire without the trigger being pulled.
There’s potentially a lot of money to be made by the tort bar if that’s ever proven (just ask the former, now bankrupt version of Remington). Plaintiffs’ lawyers have no doubt paid a lot of money to a lot of “experts” who have spent a lot of time trying to make that happen.
So far, however, no one has been able to do it. The only reasonable conclusion then is that’s because the P320 won’t fire without the trigger being pulled by someone or by some thing. Unless and until someone can demonstrate that, as one expert who appeared in that ABC News report years ago described it, all of this is nothing but “legal momentum.”