People First. Always. 3M Earplug Lawsuit

“Hello, I’m Dr. Joseph Ramos at Ramos Law. I’m a medical doctor and an attorney. And I’m here today to educate you about the 3M Earplug Lawsuit, and the reason that our law firm has decided to take on these cases. We don’t just jump in on cases for money grab. We’re not just another law firm, posting up QuickPages, trying to get people to sign up. Before we take on cases, there has to be a very good reason. We have to believe in it. We have to believe in the justice and the reason behind what we’re doing. The 3M Earplug Lawsuit reminds me in many ways of the television show, “American Greed.” If you’ve never seen this television show, in brief, it’s about people and companies who do things out of greed and for money, that is the 3M Earplug Lawsuit. What’s it about? You should know. If you’ve been a military serviceman anywhere or woman from 2003 through 2015, again, that’s 2003 through 2015, you were likely issued the 3M earplug for sound protection, hearing protection, for safety. Unfortunately, you didn’t get that. Today, we have over 52% of our veterans returning from foreign deployments with hearing loss. The biggest source of disability for our veterans administration hospitals in excess of $1 billion a year annually is hearing issues, hearing loss, issues of tinnitus, balance dysfunction, and just the plain inability to hear.

And a lot of that stems back to these 3M earplugs. So here’s what happened. 3M is a major corporation, who touts that they are innovative in their inventions for protecting people. There was a call by the government called “a request for production,” where they wanted an earplug designed. They wanted an earplug that had the ability to block out noises with a substantial…there’s a standard called the American National Standards Institute, where they require basically hearing protection of up to 22 decibels. So the military says, “We want a device, a hearing device, protective device that will block out up to 22 decibels. But we also want this hearing device to be able to, with low tones, like voices, we want our soldiers to be able to hear. So if they’re in a combat situation, low tones will get through, high, sharp, pulsatile tones will be blocked, essentially, one of these type of hearing protection devices that does both, and you may have seen these at a local shooting range, even with headphones they’ve designed to do exactly this. And they designed this earplug, a dual-ended earplug, and they made it where one end of it allowed for this complete hearing protection of 22 decibels, and the other end allowed you to hear voices and talking.

And the soldiers simply had to reverse it in order to get this protection. 3M was quick to respond to the American government’s request for production and said, “We have the product.” Now, this is despite knowing that three years earlier, they had tested the product and guess what? It had failed. 3M jumped on this opportunity for profit. When I saw that my very freedoms, the people that we love and support, our American troops are being handed basically fraudulent, unprotective hearing devices simply for profit of a company, it made me sick to my stomach. So 3M, with regard to the profit portion of this, they produced millions of pairs of earplugs. In the first year alone, the contract was for $9 million. They had the exclusivity to provide this to the U.S. government. They got the government to buy into their lies. What were their lies? First of all, on the 22 decibels of protection that they were supposed to provide, they tested 10 of their employees in-house. With the first eight, the decimal protection was 10.9. It was half of what it needed to be. In fact, the decimal protection was so bad that they didn’t even test the final two employees they had set up for testing. Now, you’ll notice I’m saying, they tested their employees, it’s because, guess who operated the testing facility? 3M didn’t go to an independent testing place to see if their product was good.

They have their own testing, yeah, you guessed it, in-house. In-house, they determine how efficacious their protection is. Even their in-house testing showed it to be half of what it needed to be. So they immediately investigated this. Why did this happen? And what they found was the earplug was too short. They couldn’t get it adequately into the canal in order to get good hearing protection. They also found that the third flange on the earplug laid back irregularly against the canal when inserted as a normal person would insert the earplug. Keep in mind, this is a hearing facility, a company that makes hearing devices doing their own testing and it still is not protective. So the design was so bad regarding length and this third flange, and how it folded down that they were getting half the protection they needed to get. Their investigation showed this in-house, behind closed doors. So what they did, is they tested again, those same subjects. They had him roll up the earplug a little bit differently and had him stick the third flange deeper in the ear, in a position that nobody did naturally. And what do you know, guess what their hearing test results showed then? 22 decibels of protection. So 3M had crossed the first step.

Now they needed to have this earplug actually be able to allow you to hear the lower tone voices, while it was shutting out those impulsing shock type waves that would come from, say, shooting a gun. So they had the other end of the earplug where if you turned it around, you put it in, you could hear the low voices. So they tested it. What did it show? It actually showed negative two decibels of protection. That’s right, negative. How do you get negative? The earplug, with its sound chamber, was actually acting as a hearing aid. Imagine putting a hearing aid into a normal ear, it was magnifying the sounds. You actually had negative protection on the side that was supposed to allow for voices. So we wonder why our VAs are spending over a billion dollars a year in hearing and related disorders. We wonder why, I believe it was 2010, $1.4 billion was spent on disability payments for hearing issues. We wonder why over half of our vets are coming back with hearing related problems, 3M, they knew this as they dispensed millions of pairs of earplugs with an exclusive contract of over 10 years. They knew their testing did not show protection. How did this come to the surface? It came to the surface because some of the 3M employees, they felt bad about what had happened.

They felt bad that our American soldiers were going out unprotected and they came forward, and they told the government. They said, “Hey, here’s what the testing showed, here’s the product we’ve really put forward.” The American government investigated it, 3M immediately admitted it, paid the government $9.1 million or $9.3 million, there was a settlement immediately to sweep this under the carpet and put it away. But what’s that do for you? What does that do for you, our American soldier, who’s been serving this country, who went out and you were given this device, and come back with hearing related problems? By the way, by device, it was never recalled, it means you haven’t been protected, it means you haven’t been taken care of. And that’s what Ramos Law is here to do. And that’s why we have this passion for this particular case against 3M. They knew what they were doing, their testing results showed it didn’t work. They went out and manipulated their own testing in-house to make it hit certain standards and they sold it, and you used it. And by the way, when they sold that earplug to the U.S. government, they didn’t tell them that it actually amplified on the voice version, they told them it was a noise reduction, ratio of zero was actually perfect. They had the perfect product. That’s what they sold.

So we’re here today to help our American soldiers who have hearing-related issues. If you have hearing loss, if you have balance problems, if you suffer from tinnitus, come to Ramos Law, speak with me. Let us have a chance to explain to you more about this situation and how we may be able to help. You don’t have to go on with this fearful of losing disability payments. This does not affect that, fearful of losing some status in military, it does not affect that, fearful of hurting your military, it does not affect that. This is simply 3M, a corporation who put greed, who put profits before people. At Ramos Law, I’m a medical doctor and I’m an attorney, and I understand the medicine behind this. I understand the grave disability of tinnitus. I understand what people suffer from. One of the leading causes of anxiety, depression, insomnia. Hearing centers blowing up everywhere, trying to help people who suffer from tinnitus or from hearing loss. Our goal is to get a fair recovery for people who’ve been unfairly put in this position and to help them go forward in the future. If you suffer from any of those things, you have a condition that’s not curable. It’s treatable, but not curable. We’re here to help you get a recovery so that you can treat yourself for the years to come and live the most quality life that you still have available to you.”