Posted on 06/21/2011 2:00:32 PM PDT by Red Badger
ARVADA, Colo. -- Their Father’s Day ended with a bang.
Nancy Passarella and her family found themselves picking up the pieces after their Martha Stewart Living glass top patio table suddenly exploded sending flying glass and food everywhere.
"All of a sudden we heard this loud explosion, and the table proceeds to disintegrate," Nancy told us.
The mother and grandmother took pictures right after it happened, and you can see the family’s startled expressions and fresh injuries.
“My son and his girlfriend were cut by the flying glass,” she said.
Passarella now believes the table she bought from K-Mart in 2008 or 2009 is unsafe. And she’s not alone.
FOX31 Denver has learned that hundreds of people have filed complaints about that same table on consumeraffairs.com. There was also a class action lawsuit filed in 2005 accusing Martha Stewart Living of manufacturing defective tables.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission investigated the issue in 2006 and asked Martha Stewart Living to re-design the table to make them less likely to shatter.
We contacted a spokesperson for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and the company sent us a statement, which reads:
"We take product safety very seriously. We provide the aesthetic design for beautiful products. Because we do not oversee the mechanical design, engineering or manufacturing of the products, we require all of our vendor partners to adopt and comply with product safety programs and reviews. If customers have any questions about these particular tables, they should contact Kmart customer relations at 866-562-7848."
The spokesperson told FOX 31 Denver it is K-Mart’s responsibility to fix the problem.
Still, Nancy believes consumers need to be warned about the potential danger.
“If you have one of these tables, get rid of it, it is dangerous.”
I’ve seen this happen with one of the rotating glass plates in a microwave oven. The thing wasn’t even on, my coworker opened the door and “boom” glass everywhere.
My neice’s oven door shattered and the oven hadn’t been on...it was the middle of the night thank God!
Probably. It was 20+ years ago. But people don’t know about glass tables and how to treat them. We have one of those glass patio tables now, from K-mart, and we treat it with extreme care..............For example, the INSTRUCTIONS say to not allow extreme heat or cold items directly on the table..............
Differential heating due to sunlight, air conditioning, and a scratched surface is possible.
Glass sometimes just does this.
Used to work in fire restoration. Glass items that survived a house fire apparently completely undamaged (except for smoke soiling) would suddenly explode when touched lightly or even when not touched at all.
Or at least that’s what we told the insurance company.
Or,,,,, maybe the frame is too tight, and with different expansion rates, a lot of stress could build up. A friend in NJ threw a big party Saturday. A guy was standing, holding a glass-bottomed beer mug. Trombone player in the Swing band hit a low note, and the glass bottom shattered with an audible “BANG!”
I know someone who nearly lost a leg from a glass coffee table breaking. I’d rethink getting any glass tables.
We bought a set of glass top cooking pots from QVC/HSN a few years back. They had a recall on them because the tops had not been properly heat treated. We had one shatter on the stove while cooking dinner.........................They sent us new lids..........
It was from her “Taliban” line of tables.
LOL!!!.............or a beautiful mosaic for her new table top!.................
Big party...beer...swing band...I’m hanging out with you next weekend.
eXACTLY!............
Three of us were cooking in the kitchen. One of us forgot to turn a cooktop burner (electric) off so it remained ‘on’ at a low heat. Another of us assumed all the burners were ‘off’ and placed a large, clear glass mixing bowl on the heated burner without realizing it. A few minutes later, yet another of us picked up the mixing bowl (noting that the sides were slightly warm) and placed it on a cold tile surface. In a few seconds, the bowl exploded and it sounded like someone threw an office chair through a sliding glass window. The bottom glass shards of the bowl were hot enough to melt to the linoleum floor but the upper class was merely ‘slightly warm’. My friend, who had clumps of glass on her clothing, was stunned and unresponsive to questioning when we checked her for injuries - her hands were still held in front of her as if just having set the bowl on the counter - and she kept repeating ‘the bowl...it just exploded’.
Oh man.. defect or what? Ouch.
Hope Martha bakes them some cookies too.
Sounds like tables may have been manufactured outside of US where there are no safety rules and our government as usual is not doing anything about it.
That’s where I got mine, and it survived hurricanes Katrina and Gustav. It is starting to rust on parts of the legs, but the glass is still good.
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