Bank holding $1.6 million ‘hostage’ from Slide Fire, lawsuit says

By Daniel Terrill

The bump stock attached to an AR rifle. (Photo: Eve Flanigan/Guns.com)
Texas-based Slide Fire says the financial institution that processed transactions for its online store is holding “hostage” more than $1.6 million in an effort to force the gun accessory maker into a less favorable business agreement.
By withholding the funds, Utah-based Merrick Bank Corporation is trying to “shield themselves from tangential, hypothetical, unviable, and currently non-existent liability in personal injury lawsuits involving (Slide Fire),” according the complaint, obtained by The Trace, filed in an Abilene federal court in April.
The lawsuit says Merrick took advantage of the negative attention Slide Fire had received after the deadly shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas last October. During the incident, a gunman used a dozen or so rifles equipped with Slide Fire’s bump stock — a device that mimics full-auto firing — to murder 58 people and cause injury to some 850 others.
According to the lawsuit, Slide Fire and Merrick entered into an agreement to process sales through the company’s online retail store in 2011 in which the bank could hold onto a “reasonable amount” of funds to cover chargebacks. The company had a chargeback rate of about 0.5 percent

Source: Guns.com