Man, I was a naive chump. As we were outfitting the kid's nursery, there were a couple of criteria we didn't even consider: would the furniture we bought kill our baby? Would it maim her or break her limbs?
Hal Stratton, chairman of the Consumer Products Safety Commission summed up his organization's fine and settlement with Graco, the manufacturer of everything, (which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Newell Rubbermaid, the manufacturer of everything else), over their 10-year failure to recall and repair 1.2 million treacherous beds this way:
"We haven't had any fatalities with this particular product, but whenever we see broken limbs, particularly when it's in a situation where it's your bed, it's a very serious problem."True enough. The fatalities were from the killer swings. Graco has agreed to change its recall and notification practices, and has paid a $4 million fine, the largest in the CPSC's history.
Fortunately, we don't have any of the Graco products on the hit list. You could say we dodged a bullet, but we know where that conversation'd lead.
Record fine for baby goods maker [cnn.com, thanks to DT readers Andrew and Bob]
I was shocked when I first saw this report on the news (CTV news, mid March). We thought, as new parents, that we would be doing our child and ourselves a favour by buying from such a trusted brand as Graco. It made us realize that no matter what the name on the side, always look at it objectivly and with common sence.