Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Embrace The Truth - Catastrophic Gun Failure

That picture of an Encore with a broken stock is a catastrophic failure?

I"d suggest just leaving this forum, take your whine and cheese with you please.

You contradict yourself. The question is not whether the cartridge is handloaded or commercial, the question is if it is dangerously overloaded, regardless of whether it is handloaded or factory.

What does a highly compressed load 6.6 grains (8.3%) over book maximum say (max is at 79.4 grains, his stated load was 85 grains)? Run the pressure calcs on even QuickLoad and you start getting into ridiculous pressure ranges.

Electrical tape or a muzzle brake???

Not only that, but who is the gun expert we keep hearing about and what lab and testing procedures did they use?

And that's assuming his stated "seated long" bullets weren't actually in contact with the lands jacking pressure even higher...

You're mixing up issues. I'm merely making the point that the issue is if a cartridge is overloaded, not if it is factory or handloaded. Your question is a question of fact.

I don't have any position as to this particular set of facts. I'll abide by what the jury said. They heard the evidence. Let them decide.

I'm not mixing up any issues. I'm relating this specifically to the situation at hand.

None of us have enough pertinent facts in this one to know one way or the other. That's what people keep trying to get by asking questions, and the answers given are raising more and more serious questions as they go.

Juries in civil cases quite often go by the way side on appeal or a retrial, especially when a mere 10% liability would have resulted in no award at all.

The point is that folks want to know what happened to try to determine whether the OP was truly at fault or whether there is a very dangerous firearm out there in circulation so that they can act accordingly. It wasn't too long ago that the Mossberg 4x4 was under the same sort of scrutiny and a lot of questions and facts that came to light on internet forums like this one led to that very bad, very dangerous design being completely overhauled (if not completely withdrawn).

Jury awards of civil damages are often changed on appeal, that is to say the amounts. The determination of liability is SELDOM changed on appeal. The Courts are and always have been very reluctant to override juries on questions of fact and a jury's interpretation of them.

No contradiction.

If a firearm fails due to an overloaded cartridge, who is responsible for the failure? The rifle or the overloaded cartridge?

In this case, the owner was the manufacturer of the ammo.

So the question is, if a commercial ammo manufacturer sold some overloaded ammo and the rifle shooting it failed, who is liable? The ammo manufacturer or the rifle manufacturer?

Yes, you do. I'll turn your question on its head.

If a handloader loads ammunition that is within SAAMI specs and the firearm fails, does the firearm manufacturer escape liability just because the cartridge was a handload?

Not always so, if there was a problem with the jury instructions or a misapplication of the law or similar; thus the motion for a retrial and the basis for a possible appeal (neither of which do we have in front of us, and I'm sure Brian will tell us that we'd have to go to the court in Michigan to get it).

Hard to be within SAAMI specs when you're 8.3% over capacity, highly compressed, and way over the recommended book load, and even more so when your gun expert and testing lab and procedures are more highly classified that Hillary's internet server.

Now you're jumping from a simple application of a legal principle to trying to assume facts and apply them to the case at hand again.

Maybe you're right, maybe you're not. But that fact is that a manufacturer does not escape liability MERELY BECAUSE handloaded ammunition was used.

How will they ever be able to prove that the cartridge which destroyed the rifle was SAAMI spec?

There's no way to do it. It's been fired and it's gone. So that's why I say that firerarm manufacturers should be exempt from damage to a firearm from the use of handloaded ammo.

That doesn't mean that I'm anti handloading or even that I'm anti hotloads.

It's just the nature of the beast. The firearm manufacturers have no control over what somebody cooks up and fires through their guns.

The only reasonable way for them to address the issue is to claim no responsibility or warranty for the use of handloaded ammo.

How do you prove a factory cartridge was within specs? You fire it and it is gone. Factories make mistakes as well from time to time.

The standard in a civil trial is by preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, it is a 51% to 49% standard. Thus, you prove something with regard to a handloaded shell the same way you do a factory shell. You look at all the information you can find. You look at shells loaded at the same time. You look at the case. You look at the firearm. You get expert opinions and so on and so forth.

Having said all that, it IS much more difficult to prove with handloading because the perception at least, is that some guy out in his garage is much more likely to make a mistake than a machine in a factory. That isn't always so, but like I said, by the time four or five $700 an hour attorneys run you and handloading through the wringer for four or five years, you'll look like a combination of Dr. Faustus and Yosemite Sam churning out miniature grenades, just waiting for the primer to strike and maim everyone within a 50 foot radius.

So, having said ALL that, I'm very impressed that a jury found a firearms manufacturer 60% liable when there was admitted handloading. There must have been some pretty compelling evidence.

https://www.tcarms.com/pdfs/uploads/manuals/Encore_RifleShotgun_Manual_03-30-15.pdf

Please take a look at the second page, top 1/3 of the page, in bright red and bold. Same warning on page 3, and page 6, and throughout the manual.

Top of page six reads: "ALWAYS USE THE CORRECT AMMUNITION FOR YOUR PARTICULAR FIREARM as indicated by the marking on the firearm. Never use non-standard, reloaded, or "handloaded" ammunition which has not been subjected to internal ballistic pressure testing."

The top of page ten is a huge, bold, red disclaimer and warning on the use of handloads.

Big old warnings all throughout that improper use or use of improper ammunition could cause serious injury or death.

I'm not seeing how T/C didn't properly advise customers of any potential dangers and how they produced a faulty manual (one of the jury findings). It's in bold, red, and plain English on damned near every page.

That, or a damned sympathetic jury feeling sorry for the injured person and against the "evil firearms company". As you've said, we weren't there, so we don't know what the jury was thinking.

We disagree.

And take a look at the link:

June 2015 Issue of Handloader Magazine

There it is in plain view that not only does Thompson Center endorse handloading as a practice, they feel it is safe in their products and they profit from the advertising specifically aimed at selling their products to those who handload.