In a prior whistleblower lawsuit brought by Moldex-Metric, Inc., under the False Claims Act, the complaint alleged that 3M and Aearo Technologies manipulated test results to make it appear that the plugs met government standards. 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.” What Does This Mass Tort Lawsuit Claim? And the incidence of auditory injury among soldiers is rising by 13 percent to 18 percent a year. They are also the top two most compensated disabilities in the Veterans Benefits Administration. 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. The United States also alleged that 3M did not disclose this design defect to the military when the contract was finalized.ģM’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? As a result, the earplugs could gradually and subtly loosen until they did not perform the desired noise cancellation for certain individuals. ![]() government alleged that 3M and its predecessor, Aearo Technologies, Inc., were aware that the earplugs were too short for proper insertion into users’ ears. ![]() 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 earplugs were originally manufactured by Aearo Technologies, which was acquired by 3M in 2008.
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