Pressure Cooker Explosion Lawsuits

For their speed, convenience and energy efficiency, pressure cookers have become a popular way to cook meals without much fuss. Just place liquid and food in the sealed pot, and high heat and pressure quickly cook foods that used to take a long time to prepare, such as beans, whole grains and tough cuts of meat, in a fraction of the time. However, the very nature of such a device, which combines high heat with heavy pressure, can result in serious problems: any design defect – including a faulty valve, insufficient venting, flawed gaskets, or inadequate lid seals or locks – can result in eruptions and explosions that often lead to devastating injuries.

As the popularity of pressure cookers has risen in recent years, so too have exploding pressure cooker cases, leading to a rising number of lawsuits and other legal actions. As an accident injury attorney in California who handles a lot of product liability cases, I think it’s crucial to understand the complexities of these cases and the potential for substantial compensation for victims. Let’s delve into the details of exploding pressure cookers and the associated litigation.

How Common are Pressure Cooker Injury Cases?

While the exact number of cases in the U.S. isn’t exactly known, we have solid data to give us an idea of the more serious incidents. According to a 2023 study by the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), approximately 1,667 pressure cooker injuries are treated in emergency rooms each year. Take, for example, the very popular Instant Pot. Its ability to heat and cook food quickly has made it a staple in many homes, and inspired similar versions from a number of companies. But trusted names like Instant Pot, Ninja, Cuisinart and others have been cited in numerous pressure cooker explosions that produced serious burn injuries, some resulting in horrifying disfigurement, pain and ongoing medical problems.

Complaints and legal actions related to pressure cooker injuries have prompted more than 15 manufacturers to recall potentially dangerous pressure cookers, including brand names many people know and trust, such as:

• Sunbeam Products: Recalled nearly one million Crock-Pot 6-Quart Express pressure cookers in 2020 due to nearly 100 reported first, second and third degree burn injuries
• Breville USA: In late 2015, Breville recalled nearly 36,000 electric pressure cookers because of a faulty sealing gasket, causing a risk of burns.
• Manttra: Recalled over 38,000 cookers in 2007 to address design defects that allowed hot contents to spill out
• Bella Cucina Zip: Recalled 8,300 cookers in 2007 after reports of explosions causing first, second and third degree burn injuries 
• Aldi: Recalled the Crofton Chef Collection’s 6L pressure cooker in 2017 due to a defect in the lid’s locking mechanism that allowed hot contents to spill out

What Causes a Pressure Cooker to Explode?

The combination of high heat and intense pressure means that any design flaw can result in a pressure cooker explosion or hot content overflow. Any design failure can cause the lid to be forcefully ejected or the contents to explode, resulting in severe burns and other injuries. The most common pressure cooker design flaws include:

• Faulty gaskets
• Inadequate seals
• Deficient steam vents
• Lid lock defects
• Improper assembly
• Digital indication malfunction
• Inadequate warnings or instructions

Common Pressure Cooker Explosion Injuries

While we use the term “explosion” to describe pressure cooker injuries in general, many of these aren’t explosions, per se, but rather the forceful expulsion of hot liquids, food and steam resulting in burns. Often, poor pressure cooker designs allow the lid to be removed while the cooker’s contents are boiling hot and under unrelieved pressure, spraying users with scalding hot liquid and/or steam. Actual explosions may send shrapnel flying everywhere, causing serious lacerations and blunt force trauma. Either way, victims of defective pressure cookers often suffer from a range of serious injuries, the most common being:

• Burn Injuries

Hot food, liquids and steam can overflow or spray everywhere due to inadequate locking, sealing and other design flaws, resulting in painful second, third and fourth degree burns, predominantly to the face, neck, chest, shoulders, arms and legs. These scalding injuries can cause severe injury to the skin and underlying tissues, often requiring extensive medical treatment, including prolonged hospital stays, skin grafts, surgery and long-term physical therapy.

• Eye Injury

Hot contents or flying pressure cooker parts can cause severe eye damage, potentially leading to vision loss, even blindness.

• Lacerations

Shrapnel from the exploding cooker can cause deep cuts and wounds.

• Fracture and Broken Bones

The force of the explosion can result in traumatic injuries like fractured and broken bones. Flying metal and plastic can also result in head injury, even traumatic brain injury (TBI).

These injuries can result in permanent scarring and disfigurement, chronic pain, vision loss, impaired mobility, infection, hearing loss, and, in the worst cases, amputation of a severely injured limb, as was the tragic case of a severely-burned toddler.

The Psychological Toll of Pressure Cooker Explosion

No one expects to have a small kitchen device suddenly explode and deliver serious injury. So, of course, it’s understandable that sufferers often experience serious psychological trauma that may last for months, years, or for the rest of one’s life. People injured by a pressure cooker explosion may endure terrible psychological effects, including:

• Depression and Anxiety – The trauma of the incident, devastating injuries, and subsequent lifestyle changes can result in depression, anxiety, anger, fear, and a host of other disorders.
• Loss of Self-Confidence – Those who suffer scarring and other disfigurement often experience a loss of self-confidence, impacting their self-view, social interactions and overall sense of well-being.
• Phobias – Survivors may understandably develop phobias of cooking, being in the kitchen, or being around everyday appliances.
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – People may develop PTSD, leading to chronic anxiety, flashbacks, insomnia, and life-changing avoidance behaviors.

The psychological trauma resulting from pressure cooker explosions can be overwhelming and long-lasting. Professional intervention may be required to help people regain their emotional well-being and quality of life. Ongoing mental health support may include:

• Mental Health Therapy (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy)
• Counseling to help develop healthy coping mechanisms
• Treatment for conditions like anxiety and depression, which may include medication
• Treatment for substance abuse related to the accident

Long-Term Medical Needs

In addition to immediate care of wounds, such as daily dressing, dead tissue removal, antibiotics and other therapies, exploding pressure cooker injuries often necessitate ongoing medical treatment, including skin grafts, multiple surgeries, and long-term, even lifelong, rehabilitation services. Serious burns can produce ongoing health problems such as chronic pain, an elevated susceptibility to infection, and poor thermoregulation, which refers to the body’s natural ability to maintain a normal internal temperature.

People who have lost vision, hearing or a limb due to the pressure cooker explosion will often require long-term rehabilitation and professional caretaking assistance to manage daily life.

Other Consequences

Naturally, a serious injury that impacts a person physically and/or emotionally, comes with challenges above and beyond physical suffering and readjustment. Oftentimes, pressure cooker explosion injuries are so serious they impact every part of a survivor’s life, including:

Work and Lifestyle – Injuries may be serious enough to limit a person’s ability to work, adequately care for one’s children, and perform a wide scope of ordinary daily tasks.

Social Relationships – Visible scars and other disfiguring injuries, physical disabilities, chronic pain and ongoing anxiety can limit social interaction and place enormous stress on relationships.

Financial Stress – Long-term medical and rehabilitative care, and possible loss of income, can create significant economic problems, even total financial devastation.

The Legal Basis for Pressure Cooker Lawsuits

More often than not, pressure cooker litigation falls under the category of product liability claims. The plaintiffs involved in these cases allege that the pressure cooker companies were negligent by producing and marketing unsafe products, and prioritizing their own profits above consumer safety. The legal grounds for these cases usually include:

1. Defective design. The pressure cooker’s design is inherently dangerous.
2. Manufacturing defects. Flaws in the manufacturing process led to a faulty product.
3. Failure to warn. The product came with inadequate instructions or warnings about potential dangers.
4. Breach of warranty. The product failed to perform as advertised or guaranteed.

Why Product Liability Litigation is Important to You and Others

Understanding the long-term physical misery, financial strain and emotional consequences that can result from a pressure cooker explosion highlights the need for strong litigation, including any punitive damages that may apply to manufacture negligence. Higher awards can force pressure cooker makers to take greater care in the design and manufacture of their products, promote adequate consumer education related to their use, and employ vigorous recalls of any and all questionable models.

The litany of physical, emotional and financial damages caused by exploding pressure cooker injuries explains why legal actions often result in what’s known as “nuclear verdicts,” those in which the damage awards surpass $10 million. This is often the most effective way to send a powerful message to pressure cooker manufacturers that they can’t knowingly place consumers at risk.

The Case of Perez v. Sunbeam

On June 3rd of 2019, Georgina Perez suffered severe second- and third-degree burns over 13% of her body after her Sunbeam Crock-Pot Express Crock Multi-Cooker exploded during use. Sunbeam Products, Inc. and its parent company, Newell Brands, Inc., claimed the pressure cooker had no defect in its design or instructions for safe use, and blamed Ms. Perez for misusing the device. Ms. Perez’s attorneys stated she was following the manual’s instructions when the cooker exploded. The model’s design flaw, which allowed the cooker to pressurize without its lid being fully locked, had been known by its manufacturers since 2017, after a number of burn incidents were reported. Following the Perez case, the model was recalled in 2020.

The Colorado jury determined that the pressure cooker’s faulty design was 90% responsible for Ms. Perez’s devastating burns and extensive medical treatment, awarding her $55.5 million in damages. The award was broken down as follows: $2 million for physical impairment, $3.5 million for noneconomic damages, and $15 million in punitive damages against Sunbeam, with an additional $35 million in punitive damages against Newell. The jury determined that Sunbeam was 27% liable, Newell, 63%, and Ms. Perez the remaining 10%.

The 10% liability assigned to Ms. Perez isn’t an uncommon situation in such cases. It’s possible Ms. Perez committed an error in the way she used the product – no one is perfect, after all. It’s important to understand that even if you make a mistake, it doesn’t mean you’re to blame for a bad design, a manufacturing oversight, or some other problem with a product. Product liability cases focus on what the makers of these products did or didn’t do that placed consumers at risk, and whether they understood the potential for these risks.

In addition to the Sunbeam case, other high-profile lawsuits have highlighted the dangers of defective pressure cookers, including claims against Cuisinart for its Electric Pressure Cooker, whose lid could be removed while pressure and steam remained inside, leading to a plaintiff’s catastrophic burn injuries; Cosori, whose Premium 6-Quart Pressure Cooker allowed its lid to be removed while the unit still retained pressure and scalding heat, seriously injuring a child; and SharkNinja, which allegedly misled consumers about the safety of its pressure cooker. These are just to name a few – there are hundreds of cases that have been brought against these powerful companies.

Why Are Pressure Cooker Explosion Cases Awarded Millions of Dollars?

Too often, multimillion and multibillion dollar companies get complaints of injuries from consumers and do little or nothing to remedy the problem. Why? A company may choose to ignore a product’s design flaw rather than issue a recall because they believe it’s cheaper to do so. In the context of consumer product safety, this is referred to as a “cost-benefit analysis” or “risk-benefit analysis, wherein the company weighs the potential cost of a recall against the potential cost of lawsuits or damage to reputation from leaving the flaw unaddressed. Such cost-benefit analyses represent callous negligence on the part of these companies, and it’s the job of accident injury attorneys like myself to help stop these dangerous practices by making sure offending companies pay for their deliberate and calculated negligence.

Compensation in pressure cooker lawsuits obviously must cover all of a victim’s:

1. Past and future medical care, including surgeries, hospital stays, and rehabilitation
2. Pain and suffering, both physical and emotional
3. Lost wages for time missed from work due to injuries, and loss of projected wages
4. Impact on quality of life related to chronic pain, permanent disabilities or disfigurement

In cases of a manufacturer’s gross negligence, the lawsuit should also include punitive damages large enough to punish the manufacturer so they think twice before committing another cost-benefit analysis that places innocent people at risk.

As a personal injury attorney, I pursue justice for victims of pressure cooker explosions, including just compensation for current and long-term physical and emotional trauma. I also stand for making companies pay dearly enough that they spend more time on research, development, and recall measures related to their products going forward. Accident injury cases are often just as much about protecting others from harm as they are for compensating the injured.

Building a Strong Pressure Cooker Lawsuit

Building a strong case against the powerful housewares companies that make pressure cookers can be complex and challenging. You need an experienced accident injury team that has the legal acumen and resources to be able to prove the pressure cooker was defective. To collect punitive damages, your legal team must be able to root out any evidence that the company knew of the device’s potential dangers and did little or nothing to address it. In addition, your accident injury lawyer must address any actions you may or may not have taken that the defense will claim showed you misused the product. Even if you committed an error, it doesn’t mean your claim is invalid – only that their legal representation will use your mistake to try to deny your claim. It’s simply a way to scare consumers and less experienced legal counsel away from pursuing legal action.

Here in California, the statute of limitations for product liability claims is generally two years from the date of the injury. However, there are some exceptions, including: 

1. Delayed discovery rule – If the defect was discovered later, the statute of limitations may be extended.
2. Minor injured party – If the injured party is a minor, the statute of limitations may be delayed until they reach adulthood.
3. Mental incompetency – If the plaintiff was found to be mentally incompetent at the time the injury occurred, the statute of limitations may be delayed.

Other states, too, have short filing periods for product liability claims, so if you or someone you love was injured by a defective pressure cooker, don’t wait. It’s important to contact an accident injury attorney – preferably one with product liability lawsuit experience as well as courtroom experience – to assess your case and help you file your claim.

My firm, AutoAccident.com, has the expertise and resources to gather comprehensive evidence to support your case. We will:

1. Meet with you, and your family, when warranted, and document your account of the accident in detail.
2. Document the incident by taking and gathering photos, videos, and your and any other witness statements related to the explosion.
3. Collect your medical records with detailed documentation of all your injuries, treatments and therapies.
4. Research similar cases and identify precedents involving the same or similar pressure cooker models.

AutoAccident.com has the extensive and highly skilled legal network to immediately help pressure cooker accident victims anywhere across the nation.

The Role of Expert Witnesses

At AutoAccident.com, we utilize expert witnesses whenever necessary, as they can play a crucial role in pressure cooker lawsuits. These experts may include:

1. Engineers who can analyze the cooker’s design and identify potential defects
2. Medical professionals who can provide testimony on the extent of your injuries, their potential long-term impact, and what treatments may be required going forward
3. Safety experts to offer insights into industry standards and best practices
4. Economists who specialize in calculating long-term financial losses due to injuries. This is essential, because your damages may be projected to encompass years, even decades. A negligent or irresponsible company owes you for every loss you may endure.

Out-of-Court Settlement vs. Trial

With pressure cooker explosion cases, deciding whether to settle or go to trial is a decision you can make with your accident injury attorney. Your injury lawyer will review with you the advantages of each, and help you determine which will best suit your needs and objectives.

In general, the advantages of an out-of-court settlement are:

– A faster resolution of your case

– Guaranteed compensation, as terms are agreed upon by you and the company

– For many, less emotional stress

The advantages of a trial are:

– The potential for higher compensation

– You have a chance to have your story heard

– Public accountability for manufacturers, as they have to own up to their negligence

– The opportunity to set legal precedents to prevent other injuries, or help other injured people receive fair compensation

Ultimately, you will be the one to determine the best course of action. Whether you go with the highly experienced legal team of AutoAccident.com or another firm, make sure you find representation that isn’t intimidated by or inexperienced in going to trial. Pressure cooker manufacturing companies hire legal teams known for their intimidation practices, and they will likely try to deny you full compensation at every turn. It’s crucial to find legal representation that knows their tricks and how to stand up to them, whether in mediation, arbitration or during a courtroom trial.

As pressure cooker accidents continue to occur, we expect to see increased litigation as more victims come forward with burn and trauma claims. Again, these cases are about more than just one plaintiff’s settlement or award – they may also promote stricter regulations, improved safety standards, safer product design, and better warning labels, so that what happened to you or your loved one is less likely to happen to someone else.

By holding manufacturers accountable and advocating for safer products, your case may not only prove to deliver just compensation for your pain, injury, loss of work, reduced quality of life, and other life-altering consequences, it can also play a vital role in protecting consumers and preventing future accidents.

Contact The Personal Injury Lawyers At AutoAccident.com

If you or a loved one suffered a serious injury due to an exploding or defective pressure cooker anywhere in the US, the dedicated accident injury lawyers of AutoAccident.com look forward to hearing from you.

Our legal team has decades of experience and the vast financial resources to garner ample settlements, many of them in the multimillions. We work with a trusted network of doctors and therapists, investigative experts, forensic economists, product engineers and other field-specific professionals, to help ensure injured clients are compensated for their current and any future pain, loss, disability and financial challenges.

With the short time frame to file a product liability case in many states, time is of the essence, so don’t delay. A single phone call sets your case in motion.

With 10.0 ratings by Avvo and Justia, 5-star ratings on Yelp and Google, and membership in the Million Dollar Forum and the National Association of Distinguished Counsel, AutoAccident.com is a trusted leader in accident injury litigation. Call AutoAccident.com at 916.921.6400 or toll-free at 800.404.5400 for immediate assistance with your case.