Phila. Jury Hits Sig Sauer With $11M Verdict Over Alleged Gun Defect

A Philadelphia jury awarded $11 million against gunmaker Sig Sauer on Wednesday over an alleged defect allowing its P320 pistol models to fire unintentionally.

After a three-week trial before Judge Damaris Garcia of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, the jury on Tuesday awarded $1 million in compensatory damages to the plaintiff. On Wednesday the jury went on to inflict Sig Sauer with an additional $11 million in punitive damages.

According to Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky partner Robert Zimmerman, who represented the plaintiff alongside co-counsel Ryan Hurd, Abrahams’ case was the first lawsuit over the P320 handgun to go to trial in Pennsylvania.

Abrahams, like other plaintiffs in the broader P320 litigation, alleged that the handgun was made with an unusually easy-to-pull trigger but no safety to prevent users from unintentionally depressing it. He also claimed the design of the P320 holster leaves the gun’s trigger exposed.

Abrahams contended that the combination of alleged design defects has led to many incidents of P320 pistols being accidentally discharged. He alleged that Sig Sauer knew the handgun was prone to unintended discharges but did not remedy or warn users about the gun’s purported defect.

Sig Sauer countered that it offers an additional trigger safety mechanism that users can opt to include on their P320 pistols and that the gun already contains two safety features that prevent it from discharging without the trigger being pulled. The company further asserted that it did not design or manufacture the allegedly defective holster, which it claimed covered the gun’s trigger when used as intended.

Sig Sauer, represented by Littleton Joyce Ughetta & Kelly, claimed the plaintiff could not demonstrate the cause of his pistol’s accidental firing and denied that it was liable for Abrahams’ injuries.

“The P320 is safe as designed and does not need or require an external safety,” the company asserted in its pretrial memo.

According to Zimmerman, the jury found Abrahams 35% comparatively negligent, but the negligence finding does not diminish a strict liability claim. He contended that the verdict will remain in full.

Sig Sauer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The defense noted in its pretrial memo, filed in May, that numerous courts have rejected claims that the P320 is defective and that no jury had yet found the gun to be defective.

But that track record has since changed.

In June a jury in Georgia federal court handed up a $2.35 million verdict to another P320 plaintiff represented by Saltz Mongeluzzi. Zimmerman said Abrahams’ case captioned Abrahams v. Sig Sauer, is his firm’s second P320 trial. He said there are more P320 trials to come, including one coming up next year in Massachusetts.

“We’ve been asking Sig for over three years to fix a problem that they’ve known about and they have continuously ignored our requests,” Zimmerman asserted. He contended that Wednesday verdict reflects the jurors’ belief that the gun should be taken off the market.