Tracy Colman  |  November 29, 2018

Category: Consumer News

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$26 Million Pressure Cooker Settlement Resolves Claims over Young Girl's Burns, AmputationsA $26 milion pressure cooker settlement will compensate the family of a young girl who was severely burned and later had to undergo multiple amputations.

This pressure cooker settlement was offered by Lifetime Brands Inc. after they were accused of conspiring to hide the existence of a faulty lock system on one of their pressure cookers. The faulty lock allegedly allowed the lid to be opened while the contents were under the expected pressure of this cooking method.

The chief complainant in this case is a minor child by the name of Samantha G. The case was filed by and through her parents against Lifetime Brands in the seventeenth judicial circuit of Broward County, Fla.

The pressure cooker settlement of $26 million will help the child and her parents with former medical bills, as well as current and future medical treatment and assistive devices necessary secondary to her burn injuries.

According to Law 360, Samantha, now five years old, was burned by the contents of a pressure cooker whose lid faultily released under pressure. The burns she suffered were substantial, but what made the incident more life-threatening was the sepsis she contracted while in the hospital.

The systemic infection was so serious that it became necessary to amputate her left leg and hand, as well as her right foot and fingers of her right hand. The girl was just two years old at the time of the accident.

The parents decided to file suit against Lifetime Brands Inc. The machine involved in the burn incident was a Vasconia brand 8-quart pressure cooker, marketed by Lifetime Brands. Vasconia is purportedly a trusted brand among Latin-American consumers. But Lifetime Brands Inc. allegedly decided that it was financially prohibitive to import this product from Mexico.

Instead, the defendant imported a Chinese-made pressure cooker and marketed it under the Vasconia brand, hoping to take advantage of the brand’s popularity among Latin American cooks.

The safety of the imported device was allegedly not checked by reviewing safety test data or related reports, but Lifetime took the time to choose a device that had the mark of United Laboratories on its underside. This company is a safety consulting and certification organization.

According to Law360, prior to reaching the pressure cooker settlement, the plaintiffs’ attorney claimed that Lifetime knew of the faulty locking mechanism which came about because of their requested changes to the import.

The company supposedly wanted the cooking device to conform to U.S. standard measurements rather than operate within the metric system. They asked the Chinese manufacturer to change the capacity to 8-quarts. This slight change allegedly affected the lock.

The plaintiffs claim that Lifetime discovered the problem and had the part changed out without sending notification to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the normal line of communication.

The plaintiffs’ attorney says that he hired several experts to test current models, but didn’t find any defects until he ordered older versions off of eBay. These older models allegedly had a faulty locking mechanism.

The Pressure Cooker Settlement resolves Case No. 16-016685 in the Circuit Court of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in and for Broward County, Fla.

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