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Recommending Selling or Installing Ionization Smoke Alarms, A Criminal Act of Negligence?
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro - Proposed Class Action Law Suit
Australia’s Flawed Smoke Alarm Standard
Hackert V BRK Brands Inc and First Alert Inc.
How Safe Are Products Bearing the UL Mark?
“If a proper smoke detector had been installed,
Duke Williams would still be alive.”
Richard Taylor says that by filing a lawsuit and forcing
companies to make change, hopefully no other father
will have to hear their son’s painful final words.
There’s nothing on the front.
There’s no warning that says,
The S.A.F.E. Report
No Warning
Smoke Detector Injuries
In 1980 the International Association of Fire Chiefs Residential Smoke Alarm Report
warned that ionization type of smoke alarms were defective and for Fire Chiefs to
only recommend photoelectric smoke alarms.
Five years later, ‘Lawyers Alert’ wrote about the “Big Sleeper” . . .
Ed Swartz, Swartz and Swartz, Boston, MA, USA. ‘Lawyers Alert’ 1985
“Defective smoke alarms may be the biggest sleeper consumer issue of the next decade
. . . the vast majority of detectors being sold to the average consumer very often don’t
work. . . . if a manufacturer lies to you and says that your home is safe, then it should
have to pay for any damages that results."
Why are manufacturers failing
to disclose vital safety information
requested in The KEY Report’s
‘Smoke Alarm Disclosure’ letters?
‘When the Smoke
Alarm Fails’
Published: July 6, 2009
Tags: Negligence
The negligence of fire victims who left a burning candle unattended did not necessarily supersede
the negligence of a smoke detector manufacturer, Maryland's highest court has ruled. A couple
was killed and their children were seriously injured in a fire that occurred in a rented house . . .
Smoke detector manufacturer may be liable
Dean Dennis and Doug Turnbull lost their daughters in college campus fires. Dennis said, “Changing laws so that ionizations are labeled
unsuitable for residential use is a start.” He also said “The other way, is to create liability -- as the Australia-based World Fire Safety Foundation
did by providing tenants with country-specific letters to notify their landlords that the smoke detectors in their properties are inadequate.”
"If you put people on notice that there's a problem, and they ignore it, now they're liable. If you had an airbag in your car and the same type
of statistics, it would be an outrage. Why are people dying in house fires when their smoke detectors have batteries?"
‘The Hook’
Cover Story
Father’s For
Fire Safety
Extract from, ‘Off-campus and at risk: The Hidden Fire Danger for Students’, The Hook, Charlottesville VA, USA Sept, 2009
“Every single family in America, if they have a smoke detector, in their house, they’re affected by this. The proof showed that sometimes the ionization detectors would’t even go off at all, and yet they continue to manufacture them, continue to sell them, continue to stand by them.”
Jim Hacker, Hacker & Murphy LLP
discussing the Hackert v BRK case
during ‘Deadly Delay’ investigation
Jim Hacker, Hacker & Murphy LLP
Shelia Hackert v First Alert & BRK Brands Inc.
Scroll to see all 9 pages
“This could be a major.
case that could.
make millions of.
Americans safer.”
Steve Berman
Managing Partner
Steve Berman, Managing Partner
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP
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