More than two million baby cribs linked to suffocation deaths of infants were recalled by the CPSC and its Canadian counterpart. The hardware, which used to be metal was being made with plastic. When the plastic “hardware” would break causing the crib side to fall the baby if positioned by the side would get pulled down so his or her head and face would be stuck against the mattress side causing suffocation see the New York Times. The defective cribs were sold at big box merchandisers such as Walmart, Target and ToysrUs. We recently discussed defective baby strollers and defective pacifiers. In each defective product the defect was obvious and easily preventable. Question: For each crib how much did the manufacturer save using plastic hardware? My guess-under 2 dollars.
Court Seals Documents at Expense of Consumer Safety
June 15, 2009
An AAJ article June 4, 2009 looks at the practice of courts sealing litigation documents to the advantage of manufacturers in certain product cases. For example, Bausch & Lomb settled hundreds of cases involving contact solution that involved blindness where the court ordered the documents to be sealed.