The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the manufacturer of a line of window blinds are cooperating in a recall of approximately 139,000 vertical blinds and 315,000 horizontal blinds, according to a press release from the CPSC. The window blinds were implicated in the 2009 death of a two-year-old girl from Michigan who ended up being strangulated by a vertical blind cord.
The products come from the company Blind Xpress. The blinds are manufactured with an adjustment cord that hangs freely and that has a loop at the bottom. According to the press release, some of these loops are equipped with a weighted device, as well. The cord presents a threat of strangulation, as it is not secured to anything and, therefore, a child can become tangled up in it and be strangled.
The recalls involve blinds sold from between January of 1995 through December of 2011. They were sold at specialty stores in Michigan and manufactured in the United States. The recall only affects blinds that do not have an inner cord stop device on them or, in the case of vertical blinds, devices that do not have a cord tensioning device that can be affixed to the wall or to the floor to prevent this hazard.
If you have any of these blinds, the CPSC recommends that you stop using them immediately. You can get a free repair kit from the Window Covering Safety Council. If you want to contact them immediately so that you can get ahold of this kit, you can do so at WindowCoverings.org.
Product Liability Claims
In some cases, such as this case with the window blinds, the company that manufactures a product that proves to be defective in a way that poses a threat to customers will participate in a recall voluntarily. This, of course, is the ideal situation, as the manufacturer is taking responsibility for the products that they put on the market and because, of course, they are showing some genuine concern for their customers. This is not always the case, however. Some products have remained on the market after the manufacturers knew that they were dangerous, and, in some cases, manufacturers have resisted CPSC calls to recall a given product from the market.
Companies are responsible for the quality and safety of the products that they put on the market. If a product poses an obvious hazard that is not a characteristic of the device – a drill, for instance, poses a hazard of causing lacerations and puncture injuries, but that is rather unavoidable – recalling the product is sometimes the best course of action. In other cases, the company will simply offer you a free repair or a kit to repair the product so that you can eliminate the danger. If you have been injured by a dangerous product, however, be sure to speak with a Houston product liability attorney.