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Seeger Weiss founding partner Chris Seeger, along with firm client and Army veteran Joseph Sigmon, were featured in an NBC News story about the 3M Combat Arms litigation and the severe injuries suffered by servicemembers due to the defective earplugs.
Seeger was appointed by Judge M. Casey Rodgers in 2019 to serve as co-lead counsel in the litigation. To date, 12 servicemembers and veterans have obtained more than $220 million in verdicts as part of the bellwether trial process; Seeger Weiss has led and played key roles in several of these trials including a $110 million verdict in January 2022.
Sigmon joined the US Army and served two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan as a field artillery specialist. In the interview with NBC, Sigmon said that he relied on the 3M Combat Arms Earplugs version 2 (CAEv2) to protect him, but after coming home he was diagnosed with hearing loss and bilateral tinnitus. “It’s a long time to be in a combat theater without proper protection of any kind. I mean, we wouldn’t send them out without helmets or with helmets that didn’t work,” Seeger told NBC.
3M manufactured CAEv2 and sold them to the military between 1999 and 2015. The earplug was intended for use by servicemembers seeking protection from continuous and impulse noises such as weapon fire and in military combat. 3M later agreed to pay $9.1 million to settle claims for civil fraud with the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2019, individual lawsuits were brought by injured servicemembers against the company and were consolidated in the Northern District of Florida. Today Seeger Weiss represents thousands of former servicemembers who were injured by 3M’s dangerously defective earplugs.