Ex-Taser worker alleges she was threatened

Ex-Taser worker alleges she was threatened

Accusations a 'complete sham,' company replies

Adrian Humphreys, National Post, with files from Shannon Kari and Kelly Grant, National Post

Published: Thursday, November 22, 2007

Amid all the litigation involving Taser International -- 100 claims against the company alleging wrongful death or injury and lawsuits launched by the company against coroners, claiming their popular stun gun was wrongly named as a cause of death -- lies a case with distinction: startling allegations by a former company employee.

Pam Schreiner, who worked for the Arizona-based maker of the electric-shock weapons in 2004, says she was threatened and intimidated, including her home being shot at, after she saw company officials intentionally shredding Taser injury reports during a legal proceeding, according to court documents.

"Since leaving Taser International, I have lived in fear of what Taser International will do to me. The company has enormous resources and connections through law enforcement," Ms. Schreiner says in an affidavit sworn this summer and filed in a court in Georgia.

Taser International says it "aggressively defends our products in all litigation brought against the company."View Larger Image View Larger Image

Taser International says it "aggressively defends our products in all litigation brought against the company."

  "I have been verbally threatened by people hired by Taser to harass and intimidate me. I was told by the two Chandler [Arizona] police officers that they had conducted surveillance of my residence, followed me around and gone through my garbage," her affidavit says.

"I was confronted at the grocery store by someone I had never met and told that it would not be a good idea for me to be testifying against Taser. In the summer of 2005, shortly before giving my deposition in [a previous case against Taser], a window was shot out of my residence."

Ms. Schreiner's allegations have not been tested in court nor previously reported. They also come with a firm denial by Taser, which called them "a complete sham" and "wild accusations."

Answers to Taser questions, Page A8

Lawyers for Taser, who are defending against the Georgia suit, filed weighty legal arguments trying to keep a jury from hearing Ms. Schreiner's allegations. Taser said in court she resigned after working for nine months when she was accused of providing false information during a corporate investigation and that her affidavit contradicts her earlier statements.

A judge in Georgia denied Taser's motion, however, and Ms. Schreiner is scheduled to give sworn deposition in the case next month.

The Georgia case that includes Ms. Schreiner's allegations involves claims of a debilitating back injury sustained by David Wilson, a former Georgia State Trooper, during his training on how to use the device.

That case, launched last year, is similar to one filed by RCMP Constable Dan Husband, who was stationed in Revelstoke, B.C., when he suffered a back injury after a voluntary Taser strike, he claims. Officers are encouraged to experience a Taser shot as part of their training, the suit says. Const. Husband's suit was filed a year ago but only made public this week in the National Post.

There have been at least 10 training-injury lawsuits filed against Taser since 2003, according to the company. They are among the more than 100 product-liability suits it has faced, according to the company's most recent filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. stock market regulator.