San Francisco Injury Lawyer Blog
Today, the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a voluntary recall of lithium-ion batteries that were sold with, or sold separately to be used with the following notebook computer models: Satellite A100, Satellite A105 and Tecra A7. The battery model is printed on the battery. The lithium-ion batteries can overheat, posing a fire hazard to consumers. This recall affects a good 41,000 notebooks sold worldwide and includes the Satellite T135, T135D, and Satellite Pro T130 notebooks. The issue is due to the potential overheating of the notebook’s AC adapter power plug, and Toshiba has already received several incidents of the notebooks overheating and deforming the plastic around the power plug. Owners of affected models can check if their notebook is affected by downloading a new BIOS update that will check if the notebook is overheating, disable the external power port when necessary, and display a message to bring the notebook to Toshiba for a free repair.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from thousands of types of consumer products under the agency’s jurisdiction. The CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical, or mechanical hazard. CPSC is still interested in receiving incident or injury reports that are either directly related to this product recall or involve a different hazard with the same product. They are asking consumers to tell them about related incidents by visiting https://www.cpsc.gov/cgibin/incident.aspx. Here at the Brod Law Firm, we wonder if Toshiba faces a class-action lawsuit regarding these faulty laptops, with their faulty batteries. Similar suits against laptop makers rest on the contention that an aspect of a faulty device is “substandard”. A defective laptop is a major inconvenience in today’s world, as many people rely on their notebook computers as a means of earning a living and for educational purposes. And a laptop that could potentially burn consumers is completely unacceptable. To date, Toshiba has received 129 reports of the notebook computers overheating and deforming the plastic casing area around the AC adapter plug, including two reports of minor burn injuries that did not require medical attention and two reports of minor property damage. It is only fair that Toshiba offers to fix faulty laptops, as people should not be forced to spend hundreds of dollars to fix or replace their laptops, when Toshiba should have known about this problem at the time they initially sold the computer. If you are the owner or a defective product or if you have questions about product liability, please call our firm.