Thousands of veterans, including many living in Texas, have filed litigation against 3M Company, alleging that the company’s military earplugs were dangerously defective, placing them at serious risk, local NBC affiliate KNAN reports. These veterans claim he suffered hearing loss due to military service as a result of the defective earplugs.

Are you a veteran or active duty military member and were issued military earplugs between 2002 and 2015? Have you suffered from tinnitus or hearing loss due to military service? It is possible that the earplugs you were issued were defective, placing you at risk of hearing problems and injuries, and you may be able to file a lawsuit and pursue compensation.

Defective 3M military earplugs

Servicemembers get a lot of exposure to noise that can damage their hearing. Statistics provided by the Centers for Disease Control have shown that veterans are 30 percent more likely than non-veterans to suffer from severe hearing impairment.

Thousands of U.S. service members received defective 3M earplugs between 2002 and 2015, according to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DoJ found that these earplugs — Dual-Ended Combat Arms Earplugs — were too short to be properly inserted into a user’s ears, giving them inadequate protection against risks like hearing loss, hearing impairment and tinnitus.

In July 2018, 3M Company agreed to pay a settlement of $9.1 million to bring an end to allegations that it knew about the risk of its earplugs and knowingly sold them to the U.S. military anyway. Since then, the Dual-Ended Combat Arms Earplugs have been discontinued, but were standard issue for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than a decade.

A growing number of veterans — now numbering in the thousands — have filed litigation against 3M Company, alleging that their 3M military issue earplugs were defective and caused them to develop serious issues, including hearing loss and tinnitus (or continuous ringing in the ears).

Austin’s KXAN reports that another Army veteran has been added to the ranks of those pursuing litigation against 3M over these earplugs. Lloyd Carroll, a Texas resident, has experienced tinnitus since he came home from deployment in Iraq.

However, he recently realized that his hearing issues may have been caused by defective 3M earplugs he used after he heard about the issue in news reports and conversations with other veterans.

“I was an infantry soldier,” he told KXAN, “so I was around the loudness, the explosions, the fire, the guns.”

Lloyd and other soldiers were issued 3M earplugs. “We were all under the assumption that they were protecting us.”

Lloyd’s main goal with filing this lawsuit is not to get money, he says, but to hold 3M accountable for its actions.

“I know most of us don’t like handouts and we’re not looking for handouts ever, but if we attach ourselves to something like this, and anything else. The more of us that do it, it gets the word out there, we should all be doing that.”

Why 3M earplugs failed to protect hearing

As late as 2009, the Defense Logistics Agency agreed to a contract with 3M and its now-bankrupt subsidiary Aearo Technologies. The company agreed to supply about 15,000 earplug packages for a guaranteed $9 million per year in sales. Each package held 50 pairs of earplugs. 3M stopped making the product in 2015, but the earplugs have never been subject to a recall. As a result, military personnel could still be using the defective earplugs and third-party vendors might be selling them.

3M touted the Dual-Ended Combat Arms earplugs as having a patented dual-protection design. When the yellow end was inserted, the wearer was able to hear low-level sounds. By inserting the green end, all sounds were allegedly blocked out.

3M’s advertising said the design allowed high-impulse sounds to be “attenuated quickly” and that the pre-molded design allegedly fit most ear canals.

According to military personnel who depended upon the reusable earplugs, the devices could imperceptibly loosen while the wearer was in the midst of extremely loud situations, the Military Times reports. The earplugs allegedly allowed enough sound to get through to cause damage.

Hearing loss can occur when any part of the ear or the nerves that provide information regarding sounds to the brain become impaired, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Every human starts out with nearly 16,000 hair cells in the cochlea, which is the inner ear. The hair cells bend when noise is too loud. Bent hair cells cause the muffled hearing or ringing in the ears that you might hear after attending a concert or a football game. These hair cells straighten themselves again in a day or two as they recover.

Repeated loud noise will cause the hair cells to die, eventually causing the person to have trouble understanding speech in environments where there’s conflicting noise.

Ongoing loud noise also can hurt the auditory nerve that is responsible for relaying information about sounds to the brain.

Filing a defective military earplugs lawsuit

If you or someone you love has suffered from hearing loss due to military service and believe defective 3M earplugs may be responsible for this loss, you may be able to file a lawsuit and pursue compensation.

Bellwether trials over the earplugs have, in many cases, ended with awards in the millions for plaintiffs, with one such trial leading to $110 million in damages. Of the bellwether cases so far, 3M has lost more than it has won. There are several more bellwether trials set for the near future.

Of course, filing a lawsuit cannot undo the suffering caused by hearing loss, tinnitus or other hearing problems caused by defective earplugs, but it can at least help to compensate for any medical expenses, lost wages or other financial expenses that may have been incurred, as well as hold those responsible for the actions and inactions that allowed this to occur.

Filing a lawsuit can be a daunting prospect, so Top Class Actions has laid the groundwork for you by connecting you with an experienced attorney. Consulting an attorney can help you determine if you have a claim, navigate the complexities of litigation and maximize your potential compensation.