Some of the cases concerned pistols that allegedly malfunctioned, harming the owner. Others involved shootings in which the gun operated properly but someone pulled the trigger unintentionally. In these latter instances, the victim blamed the Glock’s design.
Yet another set of six suits were labeled “container” cases, referring to the padded plastic box in which Glocks were sold. The box resembled a miniature black suitcase. It had a handle for transporting the pistol—say, to a firing range—and, inside, it had room for a spare magazine and ammo. A small post in the box was meant to protrude through the trigger guard and keep the gun in place. The post was the problem.
Some users stored their pistol with a round in the chamber, ready to fire. If the box were jostled, so that the post contacted the trigger, the gun could go off, as it did in the case of Marshall Rosen. “Claimant removed his Glock 17 from its holster, removed the loaded magazine and unloaded same,” the file on Rosen states. “He then placed the pistol into the container, and it discharged. Injuries to the left hand (palm). Tendon and severe nerve damage requiring surgery. Permanent disfigurement.” Another Glock owner, Mark Herman, similarly shot himself in the left hand, sustaining “permanent disability.”
When informed of the box accidents, Gaston Glock “wanted to blame the dumb Americans,” according to one former longtime company employee in the United States. “They should know better than to store the gun loaded.” Mr. Glock showed little regard for the American business credo of “the customer is always right.”
Callous as this might seem, the Austrian manufacturer did have a legitimate point. The user manual that came with each pistol stressed emptying the gun before storing it. The owner was told to remove the magazine and check the chamber to make sure there was not a round left there. Following those instructions would preclude exploding gun boxes.
Still, as a practical matter, some people, especially homeowners who thought of their Glock as protection against intruders, were bound to keep it loaded and ready to fire. Others were careless. The file on Mark Herman noted that he “forgot his Glock 17 was loaded and placed it into the storage container.” Such accidents were eminently foreseeable.
A more high-minded company might have announced a recall in the name of consumer safety, issued an apology, and established a claims process to pay victims’ medical bills. That did not happen at Gaston Glock’s company; confessions of fallibility were not his style.
Paul Jannuzzo, Glock’s corporate counsel, knew the carrying case was poorly designed. Many in the company knew—almost everyone, apparently, except the founder. Fighting the cases in court made no sense, because Glock might lose, piquing the interest of the plaintiffs’ bar. Since a recall and apology were out of the question, Jannuzzo moved quietly to put out legal brushfires as they ignited. If injured Glock owners were persistent, they received a settlement—in exchange for which they had to sign binding legal papers promising not to discuss the case or the flawed gun box. Marshall Rosen got $95,000 to drop his suit; Mark Herman, $99,000. Wounded Glock owners who failed to hire a good lawyer received little or nothing for their trouble.
As a result of Glock’s efficiently executed policy of settlement-and-silence, some gun owners who might have been alerted sooner to the peril learned about it the hard way. No one knows how many people shot themselves or others before Glock changed the box design in the early 1990s to one where the handgun rested securely in heavy foam, without a post that could contact the trigger.
Carrying cases were not the only hazard of owning a Glock, of course. Firearms, like lawn mowers or microwave ovens or motorcycles, occasionally malfunction. The reason could be bad parts, a mistake in assembly, or recklessness by the user. The world is full of imperfections and misfortune. When guns break down—and all brands of firearms suffer glitches from time to time—it’s not uncommon for someone to get hurt.
The Glock legal files describe a suit filed by Jeffrey A. Gueno, an Air Force captain who badly injured his right index finger when his Glock 21 .45-caliber “exploded in his hand.” Gueno, an experienced firearm user who was practicing at a range, “alleged that Glock placed on the market a product in defective condition which is unsafe for its intended use.”
When confronted by such cases, Jannuzzo had one overriding initial objective, he told me: “Get the gun.” The company lawyer made sure that Glock recovered the supposedly substandard pistol for examination and, if the case were to be settled, destruction. He did not want faulty Glocks being passed around, and possibly photographed, to the detriment of the manufacturer’s reputation.
The company’s inspection of Captain Gueno’s Glock attributed the accident to the plaintiff’s ammunition, rather than his pistol. “There was no indication of any obstruction having been lodged in the barrel,” the file states. “The damage to the pistol was caused by an ammunition failure–related problem.”
Ammunition can fail in several ways. A batch of rounds may be poorly fabricated, leading some to disintegrate. Shoddy ammunition may jam as it moves from the magazine to the chamber or from the chamber to the barrel. To save money, some gun owners “reload” ammo, using basement hand-crank machines to insert new lead bullets into spent brass cases they collect at the shooting range. Unless it’s done expertly, reloading can lead to problems. Glock explicitly voided its warranty if the customer used reloaded ammunition.
The company’s determination in the Gueno case was that the plaintiff’s factory-made ammunition was of poor quality and lacked full-metal jacketing or plating. This was often the company’s response when confronted with the claim of a malfunctioning pistol. Glock instructed users from the outset to buy top-grade, factory-made, full-jacketed ammunition. Rounds that have exposed lead because they are not fully jacketed, whether those rounds are reloaded or factory-made, are much more likely to produce malfunctions in Glocks than in certain other handguns, as a result of the kind of rifling in Glock barrels.
Rifling refers to the spiraling grooves in a gun barrel that cause the bullet to spin in flight. The rotation stabilizes the bullet, increasing accuracy. Traditional rifling incorporates twisting lands and grooves. With an exposed-lead bullet, the lands actually engrave the projectile’s relatively soft metal. Gaston Glock designed his barrel with polygonal flat sides: six or eight, depending on the caliber. Polygonal rifling provides a superior bullet- to-barrel seal when jacketed or plated ammunition is used. “This leads to an increase in velocity over conventional cut rifle barrels of the same length,” according to
Jeffrey Gueno may or may not have used substandard ammunition. In any event, he was not the sort of plaintiff Jannuzzo wanted to fight in court: a clean-cut Air Force captain who many jurors would assume knew how to handle a gun. Gueno offered to drop his suit for $24,000, not an extravagant amount. The company legal file suggested that the case “should be settled on economic analysis, i.e., less expensive to settle than defend.” Jannuzzo listed an “anticipated expense” of only $14,000, indicating his expectation that Gueno, whose medical bills were paid by the military, would agree to the lower amount. (The file doesn’t indicate the company’s actual payout.)
As a result, the entire potentially embarrassing episode—labeled a “catastrophic failure” in the Glock records —disappeared from public view. Glock, Inc., obtained the damaged gun and disposed of it. Upon receiving settlement, Gueno swore in writing not to discuss the incident.
In a memo dated December 17, 1992, Jannuzzo urged Gaston Glock to sign off on a joint settlement in which the company would share the costs of a confidential $20,000 payment with the ammunition manufacturer Olin/Winchester. “It is important to note that Olin/Winchester Corporation has approximately 30 damaged Glock pistols at their facility,” the attorney wrote. “Should this case be tried, it is safe to assume that those pistols will be presented as evidence, which would have a destructive and widespread effect for Glock Inc.” The complaint, brought by a US Customs agent named Wernli, whose .45-caliber Glock 21 had exploded, causing a “crush injury to the distal tip of his right index finger,” was resolved out of court. The damaged guns did not surface.
On occasion, Glock employees in Smyrna testing pistols as they arrived from Austria identified mechanical problems before the guns were shipped to users. Senior executives in Austria typically had a short and impatient reaction to any suggestion of a flaw: “Impossible!”
In 1998, Smyrna discovered a batch of .40-caliber Glock 22s that mysteriously jammed even when loaded with appropriate ammo. “These malfunctions were very difficult to clear and could not be cleared with the normal ‘tap,
