Second Chance Files for Court Protection
Second Chance Body Armor has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after battling for more than a year to clear up problems associated with its use of Zylon fibers in the construction of a line of bullet-resistant vests that had been discontinued.
Several legal actions have erupted over the Zylon vests, which Second Chance had marketed as the Ultima and Ultimax families, when it was discovered that the Zylon fibers deteriorated faster than initially suggested. Second Chance confirmed this accelerated degradation after conducting two different series of tests.
Zylon is a fiber developed and marketed by Toyobo Corporation, a Japanese firm. Toyobo has insisted that it warned Second Chance about the degradation problem. However, Second Chance has filed a lawsuit against Toyobo, and has asserted that Toyobo has been wrongly asserting that the only problem with Zylon is how Second Chance used it in its vest production.
Second Chance announced more than a year ago that there were concerns about the Zylon fiber. The company, as reported in earlier issues of Gun Week, quickly began offering upgrades or replacement vests made from other material, to police agencies all over the country that had purchased the Zylon vests for its officers. Yet, even with that effort, Second Chance was sued by various agencies and states’ attorneys general.
There have been three documented shootings in which vests using Zylon fibers were apparently penetrated, one in California, another in Pennsylvania and a third in Montana. There are, however, some questions about whether the vests actually failed, or bullets penetrated near the edge of the vest material or pushed it aside. Second Chance has issued a written response to all three incidents, noting that the Pennsylvania shooting remains under investigation by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). The California incident involved a suspect who fired 13 rounds from a 9mm pistol, some of which were “edge hits” that may have pushed the ballistic panels aside. The Montana case, said Second Chance, involved a bullet that actually missed the front of the vest and entered an officer’s left upper torso, then exited and hit the upper edge of the vest.
Particularly important to Second Chance was the fact that in the California case, the police department “sent a letter to the city council concluding that the vest performed according to the NIJ specifications,” Second Chance said.
Second Chance has learned through what it calls “extensive ballistic testing” of used Zylon vests that not all Zylon body armor fails. In fact, the company reported, there have been more than 30 documented cases in which lives were saved thanks to Zylon vests.
Late last year, Gun Week had the rare opportunity to shoot a used Zylon vest. The vest was supplied by a source in law enforcement in Washington state. The results of that test, on an Ultima Threat Level II vest, were reported in our Feb. 1, 2004 issue. Senior Editor Dave Workman fired all the shots, assuring that there were no ammunition substitutions to skew the results. Shots were fired from the seven-yard line on an outside range, using factory ammunition supplied to deputies by the King County, WA, sheriff’s department. Those tests were admittedly not scientific, and they were not done in a controlled environment, but were conducted in the kind of conditions and outside environment encountered regularly by police officers all over the country.
Other testing, reported by Second Chance, was conducted for the NIJ. It involved 18 vests, 11 of which were all-Zylon models and the others were “hybrids” made from a combination of Zylon and other materials. Eight of the 11 Zylon vests failed, and two of the seven hybrid models failed, Second Chance reported in a fact sheet. The company also noted that vests from competitors have been involved in such testing. One such vest, tested by authorities in Prince Georges County, MD, failed in a laboratory test. That vest was also made from Zylon.
For the record, Second Chance is not the only company that has used Zylon in the manufacture of soft body armor. Armor Holdings, owner of American Body Armor, Pro-Tech and Safariland, also manufactures Zylon soft body armor. Earlier this year, a class action lawsuit was filed against American Body Armor by the Southern States PBA and others but that lawsuit was settled a few weeks ago when Armor Holdings, according to the PBA, “committed to institute a warranty exchange program, at no cost, for one of its bullet-resistant vest models–the American Body Armor Xtreme ZX vest (Levels II and IIIA).”
However, Second Chance mounted a high-profile effort to replace or upgrade vests more than a year ago. According to a company spokesman, more than 80,000 vests have been “remediated,” meaning they had either been upgraded or replaced.
While Second Chance fights its court battles, it filed for Chapter 11 protection to keep its doors open. On Oct. 20, the US Bankruptcy Court in Grand Rapids, MI, issued favorable rulings that will allow Second Chance to continue operating, while reaching a consensus agreement with its chief lender, according to a Second Chance news release.
Return to Archive Index