Jun. 19—A retired law enforcement officer from Zion Grove is among scores of gun owners who have sued SIG Sauer recently due to an alleged malfunction of one of its pistols.
James Hall, a retired lieutenant of the Philadelphia Police Department, filed a lawsuit against the gun maker seeking actual, compensatory and punitive damages for an incident during which his P320 pistol "drop-fired" and severely wounded him.
Attorneys from Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky, Philadelphia, filed the suit last week on behalf of Hall and his wife, Nanci Hall, who live in Zion Grove. The suit seeks damages on counts of negligence, product liability and loss of consortium.
Since 2016, the law firm has represented more than 80 P320 users across the country who claim to have experienced an unintended discharge from the pistol.
According to the filing in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Hall was injured in his home on Sept. 20, 2022, when his pistol fell, hit the floor and discharged.
The round struck Hall in his right upper arm and shoulder, shattering the right shoulder and humerus bone, the lawsuit states.
Hall was rushed to an emergency room and underwent a surgery for treatment of his injuries and, later, another for removal of bullet fragments from his shoulder. Hall spent the next 63 days in in-patient rehabilitation, and he has eight bullet fragments remaining in his shoulder that "may never be able to be removed," the suit states.
The first instances of alleged drop-firing incidents with the P320 occurred several years before Hall's injury.
Hall's complaint lists dozens of incidents from 2016 onward in which a P320 pistol fired without a trigger pull, some of which injured the guns' owners.
Voluntary upgrade
According to a news release filed last week by Hall's attorneys, SIG Sauer did not issue a recall of the pistol after receiving unintended discharge complaints. Instead, the company issued the P320 Voluntary Upgrade Program, whereby customers could return their P320s for company-modified versions.
Robert W. Zimmerman, one of Hall's attorneys, said that more than half of all P320 users, including Hall, did not ship their guns to SIG Sauer for the upgrades, which the company first promoted in 2017.
Like many others, Zimmerman said, Hall had not known the upgrade was available because SIG Sauer did not "effectively communicate" the issue to users.
"Mr. Hall didn't know about the Voluntary Upgrade Program, and like many others, he had a dangerous gun in his possession that he didn't even know about," Zimmerman said Monday. "And he thought that gun would protect him, but instead it injured him so severely that he spent months in the hospital and in inpatient facilities."