New Jersey sues Sig Sauer over "malfunctioning" P229's

[TunnelRat]

NJ being a poor place for gun rights may be true, but does it really relate to the performance of the pistols in the article?

[RsqVet]

Sig is all over the place; their legacy extractor worked for years, the new design clearly not so much or its having "issues". Not cool and not what one expects from a top tier company. Can the design work? I am sure others use a very similar style so it should not be rocket science yet it seems to elude solving otherwise they would have solved it for NJSP.


Burned myself by a 226 with the new extractor. I dumped it. From now on with sig I will give it a few years before I buy and new and improved designs of theirs. Also not a fan of the newer sig 226 / 229 mags but these are not why the guns are throwing fte's.

[JDBerg]

Here is an article on three different DHS agencies successfully using the P229 in at least two different caliber configurations;

http://www.tactical-life.com/militar...ral-agencies-2

Seems to me that when the NJSP started experiencing these malfunctions it would have been worthwhile for the officials of the NJSP to investigate what these DHS agencies were doing perhaps differently to armor and maintain their pistols, to insure the service reliability of the DHS-issued P229's. This could have been some valuable information that could have possibly alleviated these problems!

[KyJim]

Seems to me that when the NJSP started experiencing these malfunctions it would have been worthwhile for the officials of the NJSP to investigate what these DHS agencies were doing perhaps differently to armor and maintain their pistols, to insure the service reliability of the DHS-issued P229's. This could have been some valuable information that could have possibly alleviated these problems!

Uh, they contacted the manufacturer who should have known how to alleviate the problem. I suspect (speculate) that it is not a design issue but was a manufacturing issue of some type that Sig either couldn't diagnose or didn't know how to fix properly, at least on a large scale.

[TunnelRat]

Uh, they contacted the manufacturer who should have known how to alleviate the problem.

Yea usually when an agency adopts a service pistol from a manufacturer there is some notion that if widespread issues are encountered, as seems to be the claim, that the manufacturer will be the one to address those issues. Whether this is explicitly defined in a contract I'm not sure, but most LEOs I've interacted with have intimated some relationship between the manufacturer and department beyond a barebones, "Here we sold these to you, good luck!" Heck even if I bought a pistol from SIG as a private citizen and started having issues I'd contact SIG. I really don't see the onus as being on the NJSP to fix this themselves.

[Berserker]

Never have to worry about this with a j frame.

[TunnelRat]

^ lol, true assuming the ejector rod is working properly. But I'm not choosing a J-frame as a duty weapon over a P229. Even if I was looking at a K or L frame for that matter I'm still choosing the P229. There are reliable semiautomatics out there, and heck SIG has made and makes plenty of them.

There's always this tendency in reading such a story for people to say, "Well my pistols from company X have always worked", or , "This agency has been using pistol Y for years with no major issues". That's great and I get that it goes toward establishing a track record on the whole, but it really doesn't say anything about a particular batch of pistols. Every company can and does make a lemon. Assuming it was a manufacturing defect it certainly is plausible that a whole batch of pistols might have issues. Is that the case here? I don't know. But the rare event, even while rare, can still happen.

[Berserker]

Maybe not a duty weapon, but for my personnel every day life, a J frame is good. Maybe a SA when going on a coke buy, with a J frame as back up.

[RsqVet]

Wonder how many of those DHS guns are the old vs. new design extractor. Also are they tested / returned / swapped out if issues? If so that rate would be interesting to know if one could extract it from anyone.

I also wonder if going to tennifer type barrel treatments had any role; love the treatment over the older barrels however there could be a subtle change here that threw things off.

I don't want to come off as anti improvement however I have seen sig P220's as old as the late 70's and 226's from the early 90's with easy 5 digit round counts and no issues. So what precisely are we improving on? Just curious and sig seems to release a million products... I realize many are variations on a theme however the devil is in the details here clearly so maybe best to slow the roll a little.

[Austin HiPowers]

I trust my 226 (MK25) with my life, never had any issues and it is an awesome gun. But what if a batch has problems. Not one lemon but a box of lemons? The suggestion that the ammo is the reason is, indeed, a suggestion. I will follow this case because I am curious about the outcome.

[Cerick]

Fwiw, my police academy had about 15 recruits going to Newark, which carries the 229 on duty. From what I remember, the sigs had the most problems out of any of the guns. Most of what I saw were sigs and glocks, with a couple s&w M&Ps and a couple px4 storms. My dept carries the .40 px4.

[JWT]

New Jersey and guns seems like an oxymoron to me.

[44 AMP]

Well, as usual, I'm late to the party...and after waiting 35minutes (and making coffee) for the linked article to load, and still waiting, I'm giving up on it.

Would someone please state the facts about the matter? What did, or didn't happen, what gives NJ grounds to sue??

(ok to state the allegations, as well, as long as you differentiate them from the facts. )

[Tactical Jackalope]

This doesn't surprise me one bit.

I had one SIG P229 from 2010 commit suicide on me when the slide began eating the frame because it was out of spec. SIG failed to make it right by me because I had purchased it used.

Granted, I took a year off SIG Sauer and purchased the same model Elite Dark P229 but 2 years newer and it's been fine. I also got myself a SIG M11-A1, which has also been great. I have a total of 11,000 through my old P226 (which I sold) and 20,000+ with Classic SIG P-Series in general over the course of 10+ years. So, I went back to them for the sole purpose of being proficient with them. But that bad taste never really left, it's forgiven but not forgotten.

Disenchantment, if you will.

So I carry either my "M11" or Glock 19.

[KyJim]

Would someone please state the facts about the matter? What did, or didn't happen, what gives NJ grounds to sue??

Rather than refer to the original article which referred to a different article, how about a summary of the actual lawsuit filed here: https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...Complaint.html

According to the complaint, NJSP tested 19 weapons before settling on the Sig 229 Legacy. They ordered 3,000 pistols for $1.844,000. The actual cash outlay was $1,657,000 after Sig purchased the old guns for scrap value through a gun shop. Sig also purchased from another vendor Safariland holsters for $856,680.

NJSP received and then put the Sigs into service in the Summer of 2014. The complaint describes the initial problem:

Many of the P229s sporadically exhibited a
failure to extract. That is, the weapons failed to eject the spent
shell casing from the barrel after being fired, causing the next
cartridge to become jammed behind the casing, and resulting in an
inability to continue firing the weapon (FTE).

Sig suspected "extractor pins" and replacing them in some pistols. Sig then suggested it might be a "factory mold" (no further explanation given) but then decided that a "misapplication of the coating on the barrels was the cause." Sig shipped new barrels but the same problems persisted.

A Sig rep visited the first of two 2015 officer qualifications and "attributed the FTE malfunctions to the extractor springs" and agreed to ship 250 replacement springs. By the second qualification round, the problem persisted and Sig agreed to ship out springs "from a different model weapon."

Now here comes a strange paragraph (#13) because of the allegation of switched guns (had they not noticed this before?:

At the end of October 2015, NJSP focused on the issue
that the guns they had received, the P229 Enhanced Elite handguns,
were different from the weapons the State Police had initially tested, the P229 Legacy. Though the weapons were the essentially the same P229 model, the parts in the P229 Enhanced Elite, including the extractor system, differed from those in the P229 Legacy. NJSP suspected that the different parts might account for the FTE malfunction, because the Legacy did not exhibit FTE malfunctions when it was tested. . . .

Sig agreed to replace the Elite models with the Legacy models but did not make the agreed upon deadline ( only 364 of the 750 Legacies provided).

Sig said they would produce only half the 1,000 Legacies that they had agreed to by January 2016. At an academy training session that month, with a Sig rep present, the Sig Legacies "exhibited FTE malfunctions, both when NJSP practice ammunition and when NJSP duty ammunition were used." (my emphasis).

At the end of the month the parties randomly selected 25 of the recent Legacies for testing and:

. . . Sig Sauer representatives immediately ?red-lined" five of the twenty-five P229 Legacies because they were so egregiously noncompliant with Sig Sauer's specifications that they could no longer be used. Five more P229 Legacies were added from the NJSP inventory to the pool to be tested. After the inspection as completed, NJSP members randomly selected five weapons to fire. During the first session using qualification ammunition, three out of the five weapons exhibited numerous FTE malfunctions. All five tested weapons were then serviced by the Sig Sauer gunsmiths. They were subsequently tested again using the State Police duty ammunition. Once again, FTE malfunctions occurred with one of the handguns. The State Police canceled the remainder of the testing session.

20. On January 27, 2016, Sig Sauer advised NJSP that it had completed further testing and. determined that the barrel was causing the P229 Legacy FTE malfunctions.

By this time, NJ had enough and selected the Gen 4 Glock 19 which also required new holsters. It is asking for the net cash it laid out for the guns ($1.6 million) plus the 856-thousand dollars for holsters plus some other costs.

Now all of the above is a summary of the complaint, with some portions of it quoted. It is not my opinion and it does not tell Sig's side of the story.

[44 AMP]

Thank you for the information.

No one guarantees a 100% reliable, never fail to operate correctly, pistol.

What is the difference to a court between a good faith effort to fix a problem, and failing, (within what amount of time?) and not making a "good faith effort", I wonder?

I'm sure, at some point, it must have gotten nasty between SIG and NJ, because, if it doesn't, one doesn't go to court.

If there is a "money cheerfully refunded if unsatisfactory" clause in the contract, then NJ should get their money back. If NOT, then who's fault is that, really????

[Screwball]

Originally Posted by 44 AMP

I'm sure, at some point, it must have gotten nasty between SIG and NJ, because, if it doesn't, one doesn't go to court.



If there is a "money cheerfully refunded if unsatisfactory" clause in the contract, then NJ should get their money back. If NOT, then who's fault is that, really????

Funny thing is SIG's statement that was quoted on TFB...

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2...olice-lawsuit/

Makes you believe that they are still trying to fix the P229s, even though Glocks have been going into Troopers' holsters for about a year.

For the second point, as a NJ tax payer, why should all of us pay for holsters that the NJSP won't use, because SIG could not get working sidearms out to Troopers? You really think any contract is going to be honored if you get high rates of defective firearms... and the manufacturer can't fix them when they come out and see the problem (the P229s with the old extractor, which were originally tested to get the contract, were swapped in... and still had major issues). If SIG is saying P229s do not work with Speer Lawman 124 grain ammo... sorry, but I'll never buy a classic SIG (has worked in my German P228... don't know about my P938, but works with similar practice ammo).

[baddarryl]

This is just another example of an uber-liberal, gun-negative political entity trying to get publicity by filing suit against a major gun manufacturer, pure & simple.

^^^^^ THIS!

Let me add that it is very possible Sig was not compliant and a case could be made for NJ to get it's money back I suppose, but surely a suit like this is more likely in places like this to occur regardless of facts which at this point we really do not know.

[Walt Sherrill]

Originally Posted by Screwball

For the second point, as a NJ tax payer, why should all of us pay for holsters that the NJSP won't use, because SIG could not get working sidearms out to Troopers? You really think any contract is going to be honored if you get high rates of defective firearms... and the manufacturer can't fix them when they come out and see the problem (the P229s with the old extractor, which were originally tested to get the contract, were swapped in... and still had major issues). If SIG is saying P229s do not work with Speer Lawman 124 grain ammo... sorry, but I'll never buy a classic SIG (has worked in my German P228... don't know about my P938, but works with similar practice ammo).

Several things about this story seem strange.

I think I've read everything (the details) posted here. SIG claims in their response to the suit that the problems only occur with practice ammo. One participant here said the practice ammo was steel-cased. I wonder how much NJSP paid for the practice ammo? (Wonder if they considered suing the ammo maker, or whether SIG had offered to buy the ammo and/or replace it with stuff that worked? (I suspect SIG could have sold the "recovered" ammo and recovered at least part of that cost.)

From reading the NJSP lawsuit we can see that they bought 3,000 guns and 8,400 holsters for about 1,600 sworn officers. It appears that the NJSP paid about $550 per gun after trade-ins for the older duty guns. If the NJSP had about 1600 trade-in guns, they got less than $120 each for them, and if there were twice as many, they almost gave them away! Around here, duty guns are seldom sold to the officers who used them for less than $300 (or the amount the new seller typically offers as trade-ins, sometimes more).

If I were a NJ taxpayer, I might want to know why the NJSP bought twice as many guns as they seemed to need? Even if they were on a big hiring kick, that seems excessive. I notice, too, that they bought almost five times as many holsters. Twice as many might seem rational, if everyone had both on-duty and off-duty holsters, but five times as many?

I wonder what special characteristics that led the NJSP to specify an "elite" model of the P229 was matched by the Glocks they got as a replacement? I wonder whether the replacement Glocks and holsters were a LOT cheaper? I wonder, too, whether the NJSP might have other motives with their lawsuit than just getting the guns working right.

The suit may NOT be a slam-dunk for the NJSP.

[45_auto]

Reputable poster on another site claimed that the NJSP use Speer Lawman for practice/qualification and Speer Gold dot for duty ammo. Speer recommends Lawman for "the most realistic, effective practice possible". If so, it sounds like the NJSP made pretty decent ammo choices to me.

From the Speer website:

http://www.speer-ammo.com/products/lawman.aspx

LAWMAN®
Lawman—Quality and Performance for Training
Speer® introduced Lawman to sport shooters and law enforcement officers back in 1968. Today, the line encompasses all of our brass-case, general-purpose training ammunition. With excellent accuracy and ballistics similar to Gold Dot® loads, it offers the most realistic practice possible.

http://www.speer-ammo.com/products/golddot.aspx

GOLD DOT®
Our Ammunition
Speer® Gold Dot® ammunition’s proven reliability has made it the No. 1 load for law enforcement, and we offer the same performance to you in Gold Dot Personal Protection and Short Barrel® Personal Protection. For the most serious training, choose Lawman® and Lawman Clean-Fire® ammunition. Both offer ballistics similar to those of Gold Dot loads for the most realistic, effective practice possible.

[Screwball]

Originally Posted by Walt Sherrill

I read everything posted here. SIG claims in their response that the problems only happened with practice ammo. I wonder whether the NJSP might have other motives with their lawsuit than just getting the guns working right. They certainly paid a lot for holsters!!



One participant said the practice ammo was steel-cased. (I don't know for sure that such was the case.) But the case may NOT be a slam-dunk for the NJSP.



Wonder how much NJSP paid for the practice ammo? (Wonder if they considered suing the ammo maker, or whether SIG had offered to buy the ammo and/or replace it with stuff that worked? (I suspect SIG could have sold the ammo and recovered part of the cost.)

NJSP DOES NOT use steel cased ammo. They use Speer Gold Dot for duty, and Lawman for training (both 124 grain). NJAG guidelines state that NJ L/E must use training ammo similar to what their duty ammo is... which usually equates to the same manufacturer. Speer doesn't make steel case. Even if it were the case, their Glock 19s are functioning with the same ammo.

NJSP was also a previous SIG user; P228s. They wanted more capacity (15 verses 13 rounds), a weapon light, and a similar gun in regards to reliability. SIG put a P229 in the running... and it passed. Problem is that the gun that passed used the old style extractor... and the one they received was the long style. And even when SIG offered to switch them with, the P229s with the old extractor had issues, as well. They also couldn't get the 1,000 promised by they date they promised... so that second batch of P229s were lower in number than promised, and still had issues.

In regards to holsters, don't know what the numbers break down, but they have about 2,500 sworn personnel. Belt holsters, drop legs, and then magazine carriers.

[WVsig]

I have lost count how many times I have said this on this forum. So many years and so many threads stating the exact same thing. It was true when I started and it is true today. Todays Sig Sauer is not the Sig Sauer of old. They are now an excellent marketing company that happens to make guns. They have become the Bose headphones of firearms IMHO. Bose headphones suck when you compare them to brands like Sennheiser or Bowers and Wilkins but ask the avg person who makes the best headphones they will say Bose or maybe these days Beats which are the same level of crap. They are no longer a old school German manufacturer of some of the best firearms in the world.

What they are today is an upscale mass marketer of great looking decent performing pistols. Kind of remind me of Kimber for some reason. They have gotten here because the old way did not make any money. The company and the processes that made the NJSP's P228s is long gone. It has been replaced with a streamlined manufacturing process using MIM and CNC machining to squeeze out every penny out of every pistol. They have become masters of economy of scale and you can see it up and down their product line.

When you look at the production changes of classic P series pistols like the P228, P229, P226, P220, P239, P225 etc... none of them where made to make the pistol better. They were made to make the pistol more efficient to manufacturer. For those who have been there or in the know the production at todays Sig is done at a blistering high volume pace where the avg line worker is constantly balancing QC with moving units down the line. I know that Tunnelrat can speak to this.

Sig used to be an old world small to medium sized gun maker when compared to people like FN Herstal or S&W. They are no longer small in terms of size or production numbers. They are now a high volume mass producer who need volume to make money. They make money by producing everything quickly and efficently and moving that metal down the distributor chain and to Govt and civilian contracts. The model only works when you move a lot of metal.

How does this all relate to the NJSP's P229? Well they changed the extractor once the pistol was approved. The change did not make the already tested tried and true P229 more reliable. It made is cheaper to manufacturer because they started an external extractor design. Prior to this change the P series guns used internal extractors but these cost more to make and more to install on the line. They IIRC could not MIM this part. They tried and they failed.

All P series pistols went to external extractors from internal ones. Originally the short ones were used and ran well but they switched to the long, to save money via economy of scale IMHO, and started to have problems.

Short Extractor: http://www.topgunsupply.com/sig-saue...-external.html

Long Extractor: http://www.topgunsupply.com/sig-saue...rnal-long.html

So NJSP I am willing to bet tested short extractors and then got delivered long extractors. Look it up many dedicated Sig shooters avoid the long extractors. Also the shorter extractors are easier for the end user to service the extractor.

IMHO it does not matter what ammo the NJSP is using even though that seems to have been cleared up because the pistols worked via testing and failed once delivered after a model and design change. On top of that because of the move the metal volume model Sig now runs under they could not fit the new replacement guns into the production lines in the promised time frame. To me that it telling. Also it is unclear that Sig was ever able to deliver and number of pistols which were as reliable as the ones tested.

Now this does not mean that Sig still does not make good guns. For the most part they do. Most will run well and never give end user any trouble. I really like the P320 and will eventually get a Legion P229 or P226 but I buy them with open eyes. I still shoot my older P228s more than any other Sigs. Hopefully the 3 I own will out last me.

The current Sig Sauer is not the old school Sig Sauer. It is now Sig "Cohen" Sauer and you have to understand what that means. I give Cohen credit he saved the company but in order to do that he had to leverage the old school craftsmanship and name while delivering new world mass produced products. So far it has worked. It got them the US Army Pistol contract I just hope they can deliver for all those involved.

[Rinspeed]

I had one SIG P229 from 2010 commit suicide on me when the slide began eating the frame because it was out of spec. SIG failed to make it right by me because I had purchased it used.

Granted, I took a year off SIG Sauer and purchased the same model Elite Dark P229 but 2 years newer and it's been fine. I also got myself a SIG M11-A1, which has also been great. I have a total of 11,000 through my old P226 (which I sold) and 20,000+ with Classic SIG P-Series in general over the course of 10+ years. So, I went back to them for the sole purpose of being proficient with them. But that bad taste never really left, it's forgiven but not forgotten.

Disenchantment, if you will.

That is certainly a bunch of crap and I remember you posting about it a couple times. By the nature of my job I am forced to deal with customer service issues far more than I would like to. You can't make them all happy and a lot of times customers have demands that are way off the charts.

On the other hand when a component is obviously out of spec any company who refuses to fix the problem has serious upper management issues. If it had been me I probably would tried to escalate my complaint up to one of the VPs explaining how much their quality has gone down hill over the years. Maybe they don't care anymore, not really sure.

I know you have owned a bunch of Sigs over the years as I have and I always tell people the company has really went to hell over the last 15 years, compared to what they used to be.

[Austin HiPowers]

SIG is hitting back, blaming it on the cheap ammo the NJSP apparently used. This is gonna being a interesting legal battle.

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/201...p-ammo-not-us/

[Austin HiPowers]

I know this is about a different model, but I guess they have some production problems. This is not the first time Sig finds themselves in somewhat hot swaters. In 2011 they lost a contract with the Dutch national police for 40.000 pistols, the Sig 250. Sig could not deliver the required quality and thus lost the contract. According the documents the government would fear for the lifes of the cops in the street. Eventually Walther won a new contract with the (facelifted) P99.


http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2...ama-continues/


http://www.waltherforums.com/forum/g...-news-sig.html