The attorney general of Illinois has launched an aggressive offensive against the manufacturers and distributors of unsafe baby products, including a lawsuit against a company that claims it bears no responsibility for recalled bassinets blamed for the deaths of two infants.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan says she decided to take action after months of calling on the the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to hold manufacturers and distributors accountable for defective and often dangerous products.

In addition to filing the lawsuit, Madigan's office has put together a comprehensive guide that highlights information on recently recalled cribs, bassinets, and play yards to help parents identify whether they have these dangerous products in their homes. (Unfortunately, these products often end up on the secondhand market.) Consumers can download the free guide called "Rest Assured" by visiting www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov or request a hard copy via mail by calling Madigan’s product recall hotline at 1-888-414-7678.

At issue in the lawsuit are 900,000 Simplicity brand bassinets, which were recently recalled by retailers nationwide due to a dangerous design flaw (see video). The lawsuit alleges that SFCA Inc., a venture capital firm based in Bethesda, MD, that bought the Simplicity brand and inventory this spring, continued to supply the design-flawed bassinets to Illinois retailers despite knowing the products had caused two deaths. Simplicity eventually changed the design.

SFCA refused to participate in the recall of the bassinets, claiming it wasn't responsible for the design flaws, according to the lawsuit. Ultimately, retailers stepped up and removed them from shelves.

The lawsuit shines a spotlight on what Madigan calls one of the biggest weaknesses in CPSC’s recall policy—allowing manufacturers to issue cheap repair kits as remedies instead of offering consumers replacement products, refunds or store credits. That means many defective products are allowed to remain on the market.

For example, when the CPSC issued a recall of more than one million Simplicity cribs last year, fewer than 50,000 repair kits had been ordered in the five months following the recall, leaving hundreds of thousands of dangerous cribs in homes, day care centers, and secondhand outlets, according to Madigan.

The lawsuit asks the court to prohibit SFCA from selling and distributing the unsafe bassinets in Illinois and requires the company to:

• Hire an independent consultant to develop a product safety protocol and review all of SFCA’s product designs to ensure compliance with safety standards;
• Recall all Simplicity bassinets that use the flawed design;
• Provide refunds to retailers who issued refunds or store credits to consumers who returned Simplicity bassinets;
• Notify the public of CPSC recalls by advertising in newspapers throughout Illinois.

In addition to filing the lawsuit and putting together the guide to recalled cribs and bassinets, Madigan is calling on the CPSC to change its recall policy. She asks that when a defective crib or bassinet results in a fatality that manufacturers be required to offer full refunds only—not repairs.

“When a child has died in a defective crib, bassinet or play yard, the burden must remain on the manufacturers and distributors to remove them from the market and help to make families whole,” Madigan said. “A cheap repair kit fails to do either.”

Madigan says the CPSC’s current recall procedure creates an unfair burden on consumers to interpret the cumbersome and confusing language issued with its notices.

"For busy families, it is virtually impossible to keep track of these recalls," says Madigan. "The information from manufacturers and the CPSC is often unnecessarily complicated and confusing, and too often the recall notices contain long lists of model numbers and lack model names or retailer information that would help families in easily identifying whether their crib or bassinet is covered by the recall."

Madigan urges parents in her state and beyond to check their crib, bassinet or play yard, and to use the "Rest Assured" guide when shopping for secondhand items online at sites like Craigslist and eBay or at community resale shops and garage sales.