Massachusetts Personal Injury Library
Father Does His Part for Child Safety Defective Product
A father whose daughter almost died from choking on a outlet cover decided to design his own cover when he reported the incident to the Consumer Product Safety Commission to get the items recalled and they refused.
In an article by Beverly Beckham in the Boston Globe, George DeCell, a stay-at-home dad from Fairfax, VA, described the accident when his daughter accidentally choked on the plastic outlet cover five years ago. The cap was like a stopper in a drain, blocking her airway. Once she stopped struggling, he was able to remove it. On that day, he swore he would change the design of the outlet cap so that other children would not choke.
DeCell wrote to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), explaining what had happened and urging the board to issue a standard for electrical outlet safety plugs similar to the ones that regulate pacifiers. Pacifiers used to choke kids, until a federal law changed the way they were made adding holes so air could get through if a child choked on it. The CPSC board rejected his request.
He then decided to design a bigger outlet safety plug, which wouldn’t fit in a child’s mouth. While standard safety outlet plugs, which are sold and used everywhere, are 1 3/8 inches , his SafetyCaps measure 2 1/4 inches wide and include air holes, the way pacifiers do. DeCell then contacted hospitals around the country to ask for their help. Over 40 hospitals have written to the CPSC requesting that they regulate safety covers so they comply with pacifier anti-choking regulations.
DeCell wrote to the CPSC a second time but the commission again rejected his request on the basis that there have been no choking reports associated with electric outlet safety caps. So DeCell is selling his design of safety caps on his own website, http://www.safetycaps.com, and in a few stores in California. He’s been endorsed by The Mommy Times and is mentioned in “The Safe Baby — Expanded and Revised” by Debra Smiley Holtzman. At last report, he was talking to representatives of Toys R Us to ask them to carry his design.
A product is considered defective if it is unreasonably dangerous, does not have correct instructions or proper warnings about its use, or the condition of the product as it was bought makes it unsafe to use because something happened when it was manufactured that made it dangerous to use. For a legal definition, contact a product liability attorney in your state. Although the Consumer Product Safety Commission is intended to protect children through regulating safety standards for all kinds of products, lately they have been inundated with huge numbers of recalls on defective products. CPSC does not have jurisdiction over automobiles, trucks and motorcycles, car seats protecting children in on-road vehicles, foods, medicines, cosmetics, and medical devices, or dissatisfaction with business practices. They do provide links to government agencies who do have jurisdiction over these types of products on the CPSC website
