A federal judge in Florida has dismissed with prejudice a test case involving allegations that service members’ use of 3M’s military earplugs resulted in hearing loss or tinnitus.
The action by Judge M. Casey Rodgers of the Northern District of Florida is viewed as a victory for 3M in its defense efforts for the multidistrict litigation filed over the combat earplugs. The judge’s decision in the case of plaintiff Joseph Taylor means the lawsuit cannot be refiled in the future.
“The sudden dismissal of the plaintiff’s September bellwether case, with prejudice, demonstrates how plaintiffs will clearly face significant challenges as each case must be proven on its own facts, and in this case, the facts were not there,” 3M said in a statement emailed to the Florida Record.
The company will continue to strongly defend its military products in future trials, according to the 3M statement.
“So far, out of three trials, one jury has already agreed with our case in its entirety, and in the most recent trial 3M won on four of the five claims asserted by the plaintiff, including that the product was not defectively designed,” 3M said.
The verdicts that have been announced so far have failed to advance settlement discussions between plaintiffs’ attorneys and 3M, according to the law firm Miller & Zois.
Under the terms of the July 27 dismissal, the plaintiff must also pay the defendants $18,598 in legal costs after the judge concluded that plaintiff Taylor had been unresponsive to attorneys involved in the lawsuit.
3M, however, was denied a bid to feed military earplug cases filed in state courts in Minnesota, where 3M is based, into the multistate litigation under way in Florida. A U.S. District Court in Minnesota last month rejected the company’s argument that its status as a defense contractor merits such a change.
Nevertheless, 3M has voiced conviction that its arguments about the safety of the military earplugs will prevail.
“We are confident in our case regardless of where these cases are heard,” 3M spokeswoman Fanna Haile-Selassie said in an email to the Record.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys in the 3M litigation allege that earplugs distributed to service members from 2008 to 2015 had defects and that the company failed to provide appropriate instructions regarding their use. The litigation has been termed the largest consolidated federal tort in the nation’s history.