Posted on 07/02/2002 12:00:13 PM PDT by NYer
WASHINGTON (AP) _ A federal judge has ordered a San Diego importer of juicers to pay a $300,000 fine for waiting too long to report to the government that the juicers were breaking apart and causing injuries.
The ruling against Mirama Enterprises Inc., which does business as Aroma Housewares Co., is the first time a court has fined a company for violating federal rules requiring firms to report dangerous product defects, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said Tuesday.
Past civil penalties the agency has imposed have been part of settlement agreements with companies. ``If the company refuses to settle, we'll get the penalty in court,'' said Thomas Moore, acting chairman of the safety commission.
Jeff Margulies, an attorney for Aroma, said the company stopped selling the defective juice extractors when it learned of the problem. He said Aroma is a small firm without a legal department and initially did not know it was supposed to report the hazard to the safety commission. ``The company at all times did the best it could,'' Margulies said.
U.S. District Court Judge Judith Keep of the Southern District of California said in her ruling on Thursday that ignorance of the reporting regulations, not understanding defects or blaming consumers for misusing products does not excuse companies when they fail to report hazards.
The government said Aroma began receiving reports in early 1998 that the juicers' lids and filters were breaking apart, hurling metal and plastic into the air and injuring people. The company reported the problem to the safety commission in November 1998, the agency said. By that time, Aroma had received at least 23 reports of juicers breaking apart and reports of injuries to at least 22 people. Five of the injured needed stitches and one person had to have surgery for cut arteries.
Aroma recalled 40,000 of the juicers in June 1999. The largest fine involving a failure to report defects was a $1.3 million penalty against Cosco, North America's biggest manufacturer of car seats, strollers and toddler beds. In April 2001, the Columbus, Ind.-based company agreed to settle charges it did not report safety defects from a variety of products that led to more than 300 injuries and the deaths of two children.
On the Net:
CPSC: http://www.cpsc.gov
AP-ES-07-02-02 1446EDT
Caution: Health foods may be hazardous to your health.
Those juicers sound like real lemons.
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