On May 16, 2024, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) took an unconventional action, unilaterally issuing a recall announcement urging consumers to dispose of CHZHVAN Combination Smoke and Carbon...more
Manufacturers should add “possible class action defense” to the list of considerations when evaluating whether to conduct a voluntary recall of a consumer product, particularly when class action litigation is threatened or...more
Join us over the next few months as we spotlight select chapters of Venable’s popular Advertising Law Tool Kit, which helps marketing teams navigate their organization’s legal risk....more
The rising lithium-ion battery demand is creating challenges for manufacturers. It is important to understand how to mitigate risk. The rising demand to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels has driven product manufacturers to...more
Data from U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) shows that more consumer products are being recalled now than they have been in recent years. The U.S. PIRG Education Fund published a report on February 2, 2023...more
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is an independent federal agency that regulates the manufacture, distribution, and sale of consumer products in the United States. Specifically, the Commission is tasked with...more
Over the course of about a week, the CPSC, an agency that rarely litigates, flexed its litigation muscles not once, but twice, recently filing complaints against Amazon and Thyssenkrupp Access Corp., seeking to force both...more
During the Trump administration, the number of consumer product safety recalls fell for three years in a row. When Robert Adler became Acting Chair of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in 2019, he compared...more
More aggressive enforcement actions and increased regulatory activities under the Biden Administration are here. In President Biden’s first weeks, he is making good on his promise to reverse course from the previous...more
In response to the global pandemic and disruptions to supply chains, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has alerted consumers for the past few weeks that recall remedies might be unavailable or otherwise delayed....more
In response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recently issued a series of Home Safe Checklists with guidance on keeping families safe while spending more...more
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recognizes that companies everywhere are in the midst of responding to the impact of COVID-19 on business operations, including government stay-at-home orders that could see some...more
The public’s health and safety sometimes find protections in the civil justice system and sometimes under regulators’ threat. Here’s hoping that whatever means are required, just and proper outcomes result....more
Welcome to the December edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot. The CPSC has come under scrutiny this year by some who feel it did not appropriately handle complaints about certain consumer products, prompting...more
One of the nation’s top consumer protection agencies cozied up to the businesses it was supposed to watch over, leaving children and other consumers vulnerable to significant harms....more
Welcome to the November edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot. Earlier this month, the CPSC Office of the General Counsel presented the commission with a draft supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking to...more
Welcome to the October edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot. Effective October 1, 2019, Commissioner Bob Adler became the acting chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. He was elected by...more
Welcome to the August edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot. ASTM International published an update to ASTM F2057, the voluntary furniture stability standard. The new standard applies to dressers and other...more
Welcome to the July edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot. The CPSC’s mandatory federal high chair safety standard took effect in June. The rule was unanimously approved by the CPSC in 2018 and became effective...more
The headline in The Washington Post said it all: “Fisher-Price invented a popular baby sleeper without medical safety tests and kept selling it, even as babies died.” Not a stitch of clinical research was conducted, nor...more
Welcome to the June edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot. In May, the CPSC held its public hearing on the commission’s agenda and priorities for Fiscal years 2020–2021. ...more
The conventional advice to manufacturers and retailers of consumer products when assessing a potential product safety issue is typically as follows: “When in doubt, report.” And while it is still generally good advice to err...more
Welcome to the May edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot. The CPSC was in the spotlight in April. Earlier in the month, the U.S. House Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee conducted a hearing on CPSC...more
Now in its fifth week, the partial government shutdown has left many companies wondering what to do about recalls for consumer products. Generally, consumer product companies work in coordination with the U.S. Consumer...more
Welcome to the July edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot. Following the confirmation of Dana Baiocco as a commissioner of the CPSC on May 22, 2018, President Trump nominated Peter Feldman to fill the...more