
military or in Border Patrol between 20, and you have suffered with hearing loss, tinnitus, or other hearing-related conditions, we want to help.

#Dual ended combat arms earplugs free#
McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, LLC works on contingency and offers free consultations, so it will cost you nothing to meet with us and talk about your claim. It is not too late to make a claim for compensation from 3M for your hearing loss You could be entitled to compensation for your: Please understand that there are potentially thousands of men and women who will be filing claims related to 3M’s defective earplugs, and multi-district litigation (MDL) is ongoing. Making a claim should not affect your disability payments, but please schedule a consultation with us first to talk about your needs and what is best for you. If you sustained hearing loss because of defective 3M earplugs, you can file a lawsuit for compensation. You may also have sustained hearing loss due to defective earplugs even if you did not serve overseas. If you served overseas during any of the following operations, you may have been issued defective 3M earplugs:Īffected parties may have also lent support in Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

If you served as a civilian contractor, or worked for Border Patrol, between 20, you may also be entitled to compensation. You may be eligible if you have developed: If you served in the military between 20, were given (or purchased) 3M Dual-Ended Combat Arms™ earplugs, used those earplugs during your service, and sustained hearing loss, you could be entitled to compensation for your injuries. In July 2018, 3M “agreed to pay $9.1 million to resolve allegations that it knowingly sold the dual-ended Combat Arms Earplugs, Version 2 (CAEv2) to the United States military without disclosing defects that hampered the effectiveness of the hearing protection device,” per the Department of Justice. When the company realized the flaw in the design, they filed a whistleblower lawsuit under the False Claims Act. Looking to replicate 3M’s success, the company tried to recreate the earplugs, but they kept getting different results in their tests. Moldex-Metric is a company that produces hearing protection equipment. Rather than recall the earplugs, they simply folded small pieces of them back, hoping that would be enough to secure the seal. government, or to anyone who purchased their products. Covering up the defectĪs it turns out, Aearo/3M knew about the defect as early as 2000 – and yet never disclosed the defect to the U.S. Over time, the plugs would loosen in the ear, making it less safe to use them. The problem is that the earplugs had a design flaw: the stems are too short.

The benefit of these earplugs is that servicepeople would be protected from the sound of gunfire or explosions, but could also hear commands coming from their officers. The yellow side allowed a soldier to hear low levels of noise, like voice commands the green side was supposed to block out high- and low-level sounds. These earplugs differed from other types of earplugs in that they did not block out all noise instead, they allowed the user to block out varying levels of sound, based on what the soldier needed. government to be the primary supplier of “selective attenuation earplugs” designed for military service. In 2003, a company called Aearo Technologies (acquired by 3M in 2008) won a contract with the U.S. What you need to know about 3M’s defective earplugs Call us today at 80 to learn if we can help. McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, LLC is currently accepting cases on behalf of servicepeople who have experienced hearing loss or tinnitus. Instead, thousands of active duty and veteran soldiers sustained hearing loss because of their faulty design – a faulty design that 3M kept from the government and from our soldiers. South Carolina Injury Lawyers Handling 3M Defective Earplug Claims Representing people who have sustained hearing loss and damage because of faulty earplugsģM Dual-Ended Combat Arms™ earplugs were supposed to protect the hearing of our servicepeople.
