Remington settles lawsuit brought by widow in hunting accident

The wife of a man who was killed in a 2008 hunting accident agreed in a court filing Thursday to settle her lawsuit against Remington Arms Co., four days before a jury trial was scheduled to begin.

The terms of the settlement were not made public.

Carol O’Neal sued Remington in December, 2011 after her husband, Lanny, was killed while deer hunting with friends and family near Eagle Butte in 2008. The case centered on a faulty trigger mechanism, which Remington has been defending in cases across the country.

The case has similarities to a murder trial that began Monday in Burke. In that case, prosecutors say Russ Bertram, a former Harrisburg police chief, killed his fiancé in 2009 while pheasant hunting. Investigators say that Bertram was angry with his fiancé because he learned she might be pregnant with another man’s child.

But Bertram has always maintained that his Remington shotgun discharged after it was jostled while he was getting into his vehicle. In interviews he told investigators he thought the safety was on at the time he was getting into the vehicle.

Although Bertram’s shotgun and the Remington Model M700 rifle that killed O’Neal used different types of trigger mechanisms, both have been accused in countless lawsuits of misfiring. An expert witness who is helping the state prosecute Bertram was also an expert for Remington against Carol O’Neal.

Lanny O’Neal, 40, was sitting in the front passenger seat of a pickup truck when his party spotted a deer. Another member of the party, sitting behind O’Neal, grabbed O’Neal’s Remington 700 and as he exited the pickup, flipped the safety off with his thumb. Although there was no contact with the trigger, the rifle discharged, striking O’Neal, who died later that day.

Carol O’Neal’s case was complicated because she asked a friend to destroy the Remington because it reminded her of her husband’s death. Remington argued that because the rifle had been destroyed, there was no way to prove that the trigger mechanism hadn’t been altered after it was manufactured in 1971.

A district court judge sided with the company and dismissed the case in 2014. O’Neal appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

An expert who testified on behalf of O’Neal noted that law enforcement personnel, including the FBI, inspected the rifle after the accident. The inspectors noted alterations that had been made to the rifle, but in their notes, there were no observations made of alterations made to the trigger. The expert concluded that had such alterations been made, law enforcement officials would have noted them in their reports.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, reversing the lower court and sending it back for trial.

“The record in this case establishes that the problems with the inherent design of the Walker trigger are well-documented and well-known to Remington,” the court’s opinion said. “Indeed, Remington itself acknowledged that at least 20,000 rifles it manufactured prior to 1975 were susceptible to inadvertent discharges when the safety lever was moved from the safe position to the fire position without the trigger being pulled.”

The trial was supposed to start Sept. 19. Jon Blackburn, a Yankton lawyer who represented O’Neal, confirmed the case settled, but he deferred questions to lead attorney Timothy Monsees. Monsees and Andrew Lothson, a lawyer representing Remington, did not immediately return messages Thursday.