“The x-rays of her leg showed a femur shattered so completely that surgeons had to insert a titanium rod through the broken halves, and secure it with screws to her pelvis and knee,” said Bagnell, “otherwise she would not have been able to stand. The pain she had to endure from the bullet, and before and after her surgeries, was unspeakable.”

Dueling Animations:

https://geomatrixproductions.com/out-gunning-a-gunmaker/

 In May 2019, Bagnell successfully concluded a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on behalf of one of his law enforcement clients, Marcie D. Vadnais, whose holstered, striker-fired weapon fired without a trigger pull into her leg in February 2018. Her severe injury occurred six months after Bagnell requested that Sig recall the weapon in August 2017.

Sig’s motions for summary judgment and expert disqualification were denied from the bench. The court found Vadnais’s experts, Charles “Chuck” Powell and Jon Priest, eminently qualified to testify. In moving trial testimony that resulted in a pause in proceedings, Vadnais described some of the harm the incident caused:

I have worked so hard to get where I am and to be who I am so that my kids are proud of me and look up to me, and this company destroyed that from me. I have — all I have tried to do is be a mom, have a career, be successful, and their carelessness took that away from me. 

And they don't care. They don't care. How many times is this going to happen?? 

Vadnais v. SIG Sauer, Inc., Trial Testimony, Day 1, (EDVA 2019).

“I made it clear to the jury that SIG was asking them to believe that my client, who had qualified on the weapon three times, randomly decided one morning to just draw her weapon and shoot herself in the thigh, for no reason. My experts had presented reports showing that gun not only fired in its holster (which made a trigger pull impossible), but contained a manufacturing defect after being CT scanned.”

To date, no mandatory recall has been issued, despite many law enforcement officers and civilians across the country asserting that it fired without a trigger pull. Bagnell emphasizes that these are not anti-gun cases and do not seek to undermine the rights recognized in the Second Amendment; rather, they are product liability and gun safety cases resulting from an alleged defective product.