$8 Million Awarded to California Man in Fatal Paintball Accident
By Richard Seward
Published on October 11, 2007
Mark Contois, 44, obtained an $8 million settlement from the manufacturers and distributors of the cylinder and valve that killed his wife. According to Mr. Contois, one of the most important aspects of the settlement involved securing an agreement from National Paintball Supply, the suit's primary defendant, to publicize warnings concerning the dangers posed by the valves used on older gun models.
Though the latest paintball guns are powered by compressed air, their elder cousins are powered by canisters of pressurized carbon-dioxide gas. The valve designs on these models can result in loosening on the side responsible for maintaining the cylinders' gas pressurization. Any canister under pressure can present a risk of accident and injury, and both gun styles are subject to malfunction. However, the earlier models using CO2 gas are frequently modified by their owners to prevent jamming and improve the guns' overall performance. These modifications only serve to compound the risk of valve failure resulting in a cylinder's transformation into a potentially deadly projectile. Such modifications had been made to the gun that killed Mrs. Contois.
The modifications themselves are cheap, and instructions on how to perform them are available on many paintball-related websites. Currently, the industry has not adopted any universal standards for regulating the dissemination of such "do-it-yourself" information.
Officials for the Consumer Product Safety Commission report that an Arkansas manufacturer, Brass Eagle, Inc., recalled approximately 243,000 paintball guns after another type of valve malfunction was responsible for at least 73 occurrences of accidental gas-cylinder ejections which left seven people injured.
According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, more than 10 million individuals actively participate in combat-style paintball games. The sport has increased in popularity since its modest beginnings in the late 1970s.
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