Personal Injury Law

Washington DC - Senate Votes to Protect Consumers With Stronger Product Safety Laws

In March of this year, according to a story in the New York Times, the Senate, responding to an ever-increasing number of injuries from defective toys and other consumer products, approved a measure to overhaul the country?s product liability laws and to fortify the safety agency that is charged with oversight of the consumer marketplace.

The new legislation will increase the staff and budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission as well as create a public database which will contain consumer complaints about defective products. These changes will allow state prosecutors to take action if they believe that the federal government is not acting to protect consumers.

According to the Times, this is the first time in eighteen years that Congress has acted to adopt major consumer product legislation. The new legislation comes at a time when federal regulators are playing ?catch up? in a world of explosive growth of foreign imports. This is especially true when the imports are coming from countries with little to no safety standards. In which case the new legislation could prevent someone from being killed or injured by a defective product from one such country.

Many safety standards that had previously been only voluntary will now be mandatory, and toys would be required to undergo testing in compliance with a comprehensive new set of rules. The Senate bill goes further in increasing the maximum penalty for violations of safety standards from $1.2 million up to a maximum of $20 million.

Full post as published by New York Injury Talk Blog on June 08, 2008 (boomark / email).