3M Defective Combat Arms Earplug Lawsuit
Note: This content is provided for informational purposes only. Douglas & London is no longer accepting cases related to 3M dual-ended Combat Arms Earplugs-related injuries.
What is the 3M dual-ended Combat Arms Earplugs, Version 2 (CAEv2)?
The 3M dual-ended combat arms earplugs were meant to be worn by military personnel to protect them from damaging their hearing.
The earplugs were designed to be worn in two ways. The wearer could insert the plugs one way if they needed to hear speech and another way if they needed greater noise protection. The plugs looked like two inverted cones connected at each bottom by a stem.
The earplugs were originally manufactured by Aearo Technologies, which was acquired by 3M in 2008. Aearo was aware of the plug’s defects as early as 2000, many years before it and 3M became the exclusive provider of “selective attenuation earplugs” to the military.
The U.S. government alleged that 3M and its predecessor, Aearo Technologies, Inc., were aware that the earplugs were too short for proper insertion into users’ ears. As a result, the earplugs could gradually and subtly loosen until they did not perform the desired noise cancellation for certain individuals.
The United States also alleged that 3M did not disclose this design defect to the military when the contract was finalized.
3M’s Combat Arms earplugs would “loosen in the wearers ear, imperceptibly to the wearer and even trained audiologists visually observing a wearer, thereby permitting damaging sounds to enter the ear canal by traveling around outside of the earplug,”
Side Effects of Defective 3M dual-ended Combat Arms Earplugs?
These defects lead to tinnitus and hearing loss, which are the VA’s two most prevalent service-related disabilities, with 1,610,911 and 1,084,069 cases annually, according to the 2016 Annual Benefits Report issued by the Veterans Benefits Administration.
They are also the top two most compensated disabilities in the Veterans Benefits Administration. And the incidence of auditory injury among soldiers is rising by 13 percent to 18 percent a year.
In 2012, the Department of Defense established a Hearing Center of Excellence, which calls hearing loss an epidemic and reminds soldiers that “not all injuries bleed.”
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