This case arose from a firearm injury that occurred in late December 2022 at a cabin in upstate New York. Plaintiff Kenneth Pikoulas was test-firing his new Smith & Wesson Model 586 revolver when, after 29 successful rounds, he fired a 30th and felt something strike his right eye. He later underwent treatment, during which a specialist removed a small metal fragment from his eye. Pikoulas claimed he lost all forward vision in that eye as a result.

He filed suit in New York state court against Smith & Wesson, two retailers, and an ammunition manufacturer, alleging product-liability.

Pikoulas retained an expert Vlad Lucuta– to investigate the cause of his injury. Lucuta tested the alignment between the revolver’s cylinder and barrel. To do so, he relied on the aptly named “cylinder alignment test,” which entails inserting a rod down the barrel and turning each chamber so the rod can enter. If the rod can frictionlessly enter every chamber, its cylinder and barrel are properly aligned. Lucuta concluded, “based upon a reasonable degree of firearms certainty,” that a manufacturing defect caused the cylinder alignment issue which in turn caused the shrapnel to propel back into Pikoulas’ eye. Smith & Wesson filed a motion to exclude Lucuta’s testimony.

Ballistics Expert Witness

Vlad Lucuta has a bachelor of science, bachelor of engineering with a specialization in advanced materials. He was on the ATSM committee with respect to setting new standards for testing personal protective equipment. Currently, Lucuta is the Director of Ballistics Engineering at Galvion where he is responsible for development and management of armor development projects.

Get the full story on challenges to Vlad Lucuta’s expert opinions and testimony with an in-depth Challenge Study.

Discussion by the Court

Failure to Assist the Trier of Fact

The Court found that Lucuta’s opinion failed to assist the trier of fact. Pikoulas admitted that he did not manually bias the right side of his revolver while firing, and neither he nor Lucuta explain how an equivalent force could have affected the gun. Even a reliable expert opinion that a bullet could fragment when the cylinder was subjected to rightward pressure would therefore be of little help to a jury tasked with determining what caused the misfiring here.

Unreliable Methodology and Untested Causal Chain

The report’s methodology hypothesizes that “the slightest pressure” affected the gun’s cylinder when Pikoulas fired the 30th shot, which caused a misalignment between the barrel and cylinder, which stripped the jacket from the bullet as it passed into the barrel, which led to the bullet jacket ejecting backwards into Pikoulas’ eye. Yet Lucuta tested only the first two links in his chain of causal hypotheses; he never tested whether the misalignment could have stripped the bullet jacket or whether a stripped jacket could have flown backwards into the shooter’s eye. He observed that, sometimes, the revolver expels gas from its sides and that, under manual pressure, the sixth cylinder misaligns with the barrel. But in none of the test firings did the misalignment fragment a bullet, nor did the gas expel any particle back towards the mannequin’s face.

In fact, the data he collected and the science on which he relies both contradict his conclusion. Lucuta admitted that “the alignment of [the cylinder] to the barrel never created or caused any stripping of bullet jacket material” during the test firing. He admitted that he didn’t observe “any particles or debris ejected rearward into the ballistic gel dummy head.” And he admitted he was not “aware of any published research in the scientific community that talks about the pathways for expulsion of shrapnel through a barrel cylinder gap of a revolver.”

Held

The Court granted the Defendant’s motion to exclude the expert testimony of Vlad Lucuta.

Key Takeaway:

Lucuta’s principles and methods are simply inadequate to support the conclusions reached because the data he collected and the science on which he relies both contradict his conclusion. He was not aware of any published research in the scientific community that talks about the pathways for expulsion of shrapnel through a barrel cylinder gap of a revolver.

Case Details:

Case Caption:	Pikoulas v. Smith & Wesson Brands
Docket Number:	23:cv:1051
Court Name:	United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York
Order Date:	June 12, 2025

Category: Ballistics Expert Witness

Ballistics Expert’s Opinion on the Cylinder Alignment Issue Excluded

Ballistics Expert’s Opinion on the Cylinder Alignment Issue Excluded