Hunton Retail Law Resource

The Recall Roundup is a monthly survey of regulatory activity affecting the manufacture, distribution, and sale of consumer products.  Subject matter may include the latest product recalls, major federal agency developments, and proposed or new federal rules.  The blog’s goal is to provide an overview, rather than a comprehensive report on every development that could potentially affect businesses or consumers.  Nothing herein constitutes legal advice.  If you have questions or comments about the blog, please reach out to the authors.

The CPSC’s nine-year saga over magnet sets has finally concluded.  Magnet sets are clusters of small, separable, magnetic balls that a consumer can rearrange into countless shapes.  In 2012, a distributor refused to voluntarily recall the magnet sets, forcing the CPSC to file an administrative complaint alleging that the magnet sets were defective and presented a substantial ingestion hazard to young children.  In 2017, the CPSC concluded that the magnet sets posed a substantial product hazard that cannot be mitigated by package warnings and ordered the distributor to recall the magnet sets.  The distributor sued in federal court to block the CPSC’s order.  After multiple appeals, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately agreed with the CPSC.  Thus, this month the CPSC issued a rare mandatory recall of 10 million magnet sets.  The recall noted that two children who had ingested the magnets from the magnet sets required surgery to remove them and a 19-month-old child died after ingesting similar high-powered magnets.  The CPSC also issued a warning to consumers about the dangers of high-powered magnets, noting that from 2009 to 2018, there was an estimated 4,500 cases of children from 11 months old to 16 years old who were treated in US hospitals for ingestion of high-powered magnets.

In the world of consumer products, the month of May was all about infant sleep products. The CPSC recently approved a new federal standard for infant sleep products for infants up to five months of age since such inclined sleepers, bassinets, and in-bed sleepers that have been linked to multiple infant deaths. Beginning in June 2022, infant sleep products must meet a new federal safety standard. The new federal standard incorporates a voluntary ASTM safety standard with further modifications to strengthen it. If the products do not already meet the requirements of an existing CPSC standard, then the products must pass testing to confirm that the sleep angle surface is 10 degrees or lower and comply with the CPSC’s safety standard for bassinets and cradles.

The CPSC recently announced its first civil penalty of 2021.  Cybex International, Inc. (Cybex) agreed to pay $7.95 million after the workout equipment manufacturer allegedly failed to immediately report to the CPSC the defects in two of its products.