The U.S. government on Wednesday sued Spectrum Brands Holdings Inc. for its alleged failure to timely report that the plastic handles on carafes of its Black & Decker SpaceMaker coffee pots could detach suddenly, posing burn and laceration hazards to consumers.
In a complaint filed in the federal court in Madison, Wisconsin, the government said Spectrum and Applica Consumer Products waited until April 2012 to tell the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission about the problem, despite having received hundreds of consumer complaints since early 2009.
Spectrum bought Applica’s parent Russell Hobbs in June 2010.
The government said Applica recalled about 159,000 of the 12-cup coffeemakers, which were made in China and designed to fit under cabinets, in June 2012, by which time it had reports of roughly 1,600 broken handles and more than 60 related burns, including from spilled coffee.
It also said Applica later sold several hundred more of the coffeemakers, which the company said was inadvertent, and that these were also recalled.
The lawsuit seeks civil penalties, improved monitoring and controls, and other remedies.
A Spectrum spokesman said the Middleton, Wisconsin-based company intends to vigorously defend against the lawsuit, “which relates to an arbitrary civil penalty demand” by the CPSC.