Good morning.
Well, this sounds very strange to me. Take a look at this picture:
At the left is the bottom plug in the lower fork leg, it has the slotted adjuster screw in the middle where you adjust the compression damping (or at least can try to, see my previous posts on the subject).
This plug goes thru the hole in the fork leg and connects with the internal thread in the aluminium comp stack holder to the right. This, in turn, sits inside the cartridge tube and is held in place with said circlip / lock ring.
When assembling the fork, the plug is torqued to 40 Nm against this circlip /lock ring, and if ever the comp stack holder would come past the lock ring, this is the time.
The slotted screw you turn from the outside when adjusting the damping only turns, it does not move axially.
On the inside, it has a slot which mates with the blade of the the threaded part in the middle; the not-so-needle-shaped tip on the right is the compression adjuster needle.
As you turn the screw on the outside, this needle climbs (or descends depending on which way you turn) on the internal threads in the bottom plug and has no physical contact with anything else. Especially, no interaction whatsoever with the circlip.
Also, when assembled the fork spring pushes the fork apart; this circlip is what prevents the forks from falling apart.
There is a remote possibility that the slot-and-blade connection between the external adjuster and the internal needle thingy has a problem; with everything properly assembled the tolerance should not allow them to come apart, though.
I hope I managed to make this reasonably understandable; if not let me know.
Kind regards and good luck
