Sacramento Injury Attorney Blog

Nestle has announced a Lean Cuisine spaghetti and meatball recall affecting more than 17,000 packages as the result of consumers finding pieces of red plastic in their food.

Nestle has suggested that the plastic came from a red emergency stop button, although the plant where the packages were produced reports no buttons were broken and the "emergency stop" buttons were not located near food transit locations.

If you believe you have purchased an affected product, you can contact the company directly through its website.

The recently enacted Food Safety Law aims at protecting consumer from harm as the result of contaminated food products and food borne illnesses both by lessening their frequency and imposing penalties. If you have become sick or suffered harm as the result of consuming or purchasing a contaminated product, contact an experienced California personal injury lawyer to begin investigating your case.

The new laws hope to make your food safer and include the following important provisions:

• Mandatory recalls - The FDA may now order a company to recall a product were a company fails to initiate one.
• Mandatory inspection - The Secretary of Health and Human Services is required to rank the food facilities with the highest risk for contamination and inspect the facilities at least once every three years.
• Greater access to food facilities records.
• More control over standards for imported food.
•Implementation of preventative measures, including the identification of critical points where food could become contaminated.

Continue reading "California Food Safety Concerns In Wake Of Lean Cuisine Contamination" »

This past week, more than 500,000 bassinets were recalled due to the risk of collapse. With at least 10 reported incidents, including two injuries, Burlington Basket Co. has issued a bassinet recall, and is providing free kits with instructions on how to fix the problem.

NPR reports that nearly 10,000 kids a year are injured in cribs, bassinets and playpens. About 1 in 5 of these injuries constitute a concussion or other head injury.

If your child has been injured due to a defective bassinet or any other malfunctioning product, contact an experienced Sacramento defective product lawyer to begin investigating the injury.

A product may be considered defective when its design makes it unreasonably dangerous for its intended use, when the product has been manufactured incorrectly or when the product contains inadequate warning labels.

Continue reading "500,000 Defective Bassinets Recalled" »

Earlier this week, a jury awarded $15 million to the parents of two young Santa Cruz women killed in an automobile accident. The women died after their PT Cruiser hit a big rig head on and burst into flames. Enterprise Rent-A-Car owned the PT Cruiser and had rented it to the girls. Although the car was part of a recall to check for power steering fluid leaks linked to car fires, Enterprise Rent-A-Car had not yet serviced the car.

The recall notice had told PT Cruiser owners to contact the dealer for a service appointment, but did not ground the cars.

The car rental agency admitted liability for the accident and stated, "Given all we have learned, today we would ground the recalled PT Cruiser until repaired."

This year alone hundreds of thousands of cars have been recalled, including the massive Toyota recall for accelerator defects, as well as a recall of Honda minivans for breaking problems and power steering issues in thousands of Ford vehicles.

Too often these recalls happen after serious accidents and deaths occur. And in tragic cases such as the Santa Cruz accidents, the recall is not sufficiently urgent. If a car is dangerous due to a defect, it should be taken off the road immediately. Car manufacturers and car rental companies must due more to protect consumers who rely on their cars as a safe mode of transportation.

Continue reading "$15 Million Verdict In Santa Cruz Wrongful Death Case " »

According to the Los Angeles Times, Infantino has recalled more than 1 million baby slings after three infants suffocated.

If the slings are determined to have a design defect, a manufacturing defect or a marketing defect, the manufacturer, distributor, or even retail seller could be held liable in a products liability case.

Earlier this March, the Consumer Product Safety Commission stated that it was investing 14 deaths over the last 20 years related to the use of baby slings. The CPSC has now advised consumers to stop using the slings with infants younger than four months and not to try to fix the carriers, but to replace them instead. Because young babies have little motor control of their head, they are at risk for suffocation.

Liability for a defective product is established in one of three ways:

•The product is designed defectively. A product has a defective design when the foreseeable risks of harm could have been reduced or eliminated by using a different design.
•The product has a manufacturing defect. An error in the manufacturing process causes a few or many of a particular product to be defective. A product is also considered defective if the manufacturer fails to provide adequate warnings regarding the dangers of improper use.
•Marketing defects. A distributor and seller of a product may be held strictly liable in a case where the marketing is misleading.

The slings were sold from January 2003 through March 2010 at Target, Walmart, Babies R Us, Amazon.com and many other children's stores throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Continue reading "Massive Baby Sling Recall Could Affect Thousands of California Families" »

Earlier this week Honda announced a recall of over 410,000 Odyssey minivans and Elements due to braking problems that could create problems stopping. According to NHTSA, at least three car crashes have been linked to the defect causing minor injuries.

Car accidents are one of the leading causes of personal injury and wrongful death in California.

The defect is linked to Honda's electronic stability control system, which brakes all of the car's wheels in an emergency and allows some air to enter the hydraulic brake line. As a result, drivers are forced to apply excessive pressure while braking.

According the California New Car Dealers Association in Sacramento, the Odyssey was rated as the best-selling minivan California.

The Honda recall follows the massive recalls issued in recent months by Toyota for accelerator defects and Ford Motor Company for power steering defects.

Continue reading "Honda Recalls Thousands of California Minivans" »