Nikon finally sent me a new pair of Monarch 5's, but only after making me jump through hoops, checking repair time, checking their repair center stock of replacement binocs, waiting for my binocs to arrive at their repair center, and several levels of "hmm, what should we do about this".
When they finally agreed to replace them, I was already up at camp. They had to mail them to the office of the guy I lease from. I'm happy that they replaced them, but they still won't admit that they have a design flaw. I'm going to go ahead and get a pair of Vortex binocs, and relegate the Nikons to back use only since I can't trust them to not fail on a trip.