In response to the CPSC warning, Infantino LLC, the company behind one of the most controversial baby slings, has announced a recall of over one million baby slings that have been sold throughout North America.

“It does not matter how old your baby is at this point with the Infantino sling,” CPSC’s Scott Wolfson told ABC News. “Do not use it. This sling places the baby in a very deep part of the product. What is so dangerous is when the fabric covers nose and mouth or when baby is turned into the body of the mother and the airway is restricted.”

At least 13 babies have died while resting in the sling, including three this year, according to news reports. According to the CPSC, a child can suffocate when a sling’s cloth is covering its nose and mouth. Because of babies’ weak neck muscles, they are not always able to turn their head free.

In a statement, Infantino said, “We appreciate the actions by the CPSC today, and are committed to working with them as well as parents and caregivers to address concerns they may have with baby slings.”

Motley Fool attributes some of the company’s success to consumers having “the attention span of the kids for whom they’re buying toys.” While that might be partly true, the company also did pro-actively work to fix the situation and ensure that the same problems don’t come up in the future. Whatever the reasons for its success, Mattel can be happy it didn’t go the way of Topps Meat Co., which suffered a recall around the same time and immediately went out of business.

Motley Fool also notes that Hasbro, obviously a big rival to Mattel, is expected to release very “upbeat” reports on its own fourth-quarter results, which will likely overshadow Mattel’s meager but important progress. Hasbro, which recently bought the Cranium board game, is predicted to announce “a 30% increase in profits on a 9% increase in sales to $1.2 billion.”

The recall, one of the largest beef recalls in U.S. history, was initiated because the meat was potentially contaminated with E. coli. It was the first recall for the company, founded 67 years ago.

Although only 87 employees officially worked for Topps, it was considered one of the largest suppliers of frozen hamburger patties in the country. Ten of the employees will stay on to assist the USDA in its investigation, the company said.

Thirty people are believed to have become sick from eating Topps’ meat, although none have died.

Commentary: You can’t get a more blatant example of why quality controls are a necessity.

Topps Meat, Co. recalled the meat, which included ground beef and those packages that have either a “sell by” or “best if used by” date between September 25, 2007 and September 25, 2008 on the casing.

Additionally, all recalled products will have a USDA establishment number of EST 9748, according to a press release issued by the company. The number can be found on the back panel of the package and/or in the USDA legend.

This marks the ninth E. coli related outbreak in the United States since 1990.

Commentary: Topps Meat made sure to note in their press releases that the recall was voluntary. All in all the company has done a good job of handling the issue by taking such steps as posting information about E. coli on their website and listing the UPC codes of at-risk products.

The worldwide recall affects 967,000 Nickelodeon and Sesame Street toys, including such popular items the Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, David Allmark, general manager of Fisher-Price, said the problem was detected by an internal investigation and self-reported to the consumer product safety commission (CPSC).

Under current U.S. regulations, children’s products found to have more than .06 percent lead accessible to users are subject to a recall.

Commentary: Understandably, Fisher-Price spun the positives hard to this: an internal probe discovered the contamination and they were able to ‘quarantine’ two-thirds of the toys before they reached store shelves, and that the company would use the recall as an opportunity to put even better monitoring systems in place.

Gary Shipman, a Wilmington lawyer who led the suit, countered by arguing that the order was error-ridden, served out of the blue (as the case is two years old), and that Tennille did not have jurisdiction to rule on the case.

The class action suit accused Sears of overcharging patrons – charging each for four-wheel alignments on cars that can only be serviced with a less expensive two wheel alignment. Although the inflation only amounted to a few dollars per customer, it meant millions of dollars in revenues for the retail giant. Tennille claimed in his order that for each plaintiff that received a $10 check or a $4 coupon, their counsel would pocket nearly $3,000.

Medtronic has been facing approximately 2,000 claims over battery defects in the defibrillators which are potentially fatal and had tried to keep the settlement confidential. The corporation, however, did reserve the right to pull out of the agreement if 90% of claimants did accept it.

In the past Medtronic recalled 87,000 defibrillators because of battery failures – but said that no deaths were linked to any failures of the devices. Plaintiff lawyers contend that Medtronic officials, despite know of the defects, continued selling flawed products for two years after learning in 2003 about the battery-failure glitches.

Commentary: Medtronic is hardly the only company having trouble with defibrillators however. Guidant (now owned by Boston Scientific) did a 2005 recall of over 100,000 defibrillators (and like Medtronic, the plaintiff bar is arguing that the company knew of the defects but hid them to protect sales – but unlike Medtronic, the Guidant defibrillators were linked to at least seven deaths). Just two weeks ago, Guidant agreed to pay $195 million to settle roughly 4,000 claims (which probably set the dollar range and motivation behind this similar settlement). The third-largest heart device maker, St. Jude, also conducted a monster recall of 75,000 defibrillators in 2005.

Care to know an interesting (and spooky) thought? The St. Jude recall was in part due to battery failures resulting from interference from cosmic rays!!! Better call Dr. Spock.

While FTS said it will replace as many of the tires as it can, it will be forced to declare bankruptcy after only replacing approximately 10% of the tires impacted.

Background story: Last week, the NHTSA ordered FTS to recall the light truck/SUV radials produced by China-based Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. Apparently, the tires were either missing gun strip or it was deemed insufficient. The failure by the manufacturer to place these adhesive strips between the tire belts caused the tires to degrade and eventually separate, resulting in fatal crashes. Some of the brand names under which the tires have been sold include Compass, Telluride, Westlake and YKS.

Tires which have been marketed as designed to last 40,000 miles are actually coming apart after only 25,000 miles. Some tests allegedly have found that the Zhongce tires also had dangerously thin inner liners, permitting air to leak and damage the outer walls of the tires.

Commentary: It gets worse. The lawyer behind the recall (he sued FTS, who then notified NHTSA, who then ordered the recall) say that there may be five other similar distributors of these tires… and that there are up to five million on the road. Read about in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Memo to procurement: when they said buy “exploding Chinese fireworks for the holiday” they did not mean for you to confuse “fire” with “tire.”

Commentary: The impetus for this additional recall effort was a Toshiba laptop catching on fire (yes, it had a Sony battery pack) six weeks ago (a full eight months AFTER the recall began). Another fire occurred back in April in Japan as well.

With all the news around recalls these days (pet food, toys with lead, exploding Chinese tires, etc.), this case serves an interesting reminder that, even with great publicity, it is difficult to get consumers to participate in recalls. This begs the question of when is enough effort enough, and the responsibility/liability is shared with the non-participating consumer?

Ultimately it of course it depends on the potential liability for of the product failure itself. We are cringing at the thought of one of these non-recalled laptop setthing an in-transit airplane on fire (experts say that a burning laptop will bring down a jumbojet in less than 15 minutes).

We’re happy to see Toshiba showing some responsibility on this (where’s Sony?) and wonder if some of the other laptop makers have skeletons in their closets – as the disclosure on recall participation has been dismal by all the major players. We hope we are not the ones on THAT flight.

As 29-year-old Christopher Woods told the New York Post…

“It gave me a lot of energy — too much energy,” Woods said of the protein drink. “It was unbearable and embarrassing.”

“It was awful. It was painful. I would always wear jeans but it was hard to go out, so I had to buy some sweatpants,” he added.

Mr. Woods had to undergo a pair of medical procedures to ease the pressure, and he is suing now claiming partially impotence and emotional distress.

Commentary: We are no marketing pros here – nor conspiracy theorists. However, could this suit actually help boost sales of this nutritional drink? Or could Novartis have a secret investment in a sweatpants company? Hmmmmm… so many investigative angles to pursue here.

In April 2005, Hoover conducted a recall of 636,000 Hoover Self-Propelled Upright Vacuum Cleaners because of defective on-off switches. n June 2004, after CPSC received notice of several vacuum cleaner incidents, the Commission staff requested Hoover provide a full report of incident information. In July 2004, when Hoover submitted a full report, it had notice of 260 consumer incidents, of which 141 involved reports of fire. Additionally, there was one report of a minor burn injury. However, Hoover first learned of a vacuum cleaner switch on one of these units overheating and melting in April 1999.

Under Federal Law, Hoover would have been required to report to CPSC immediately (within 24 hours) after obtaining information reasonably supporting the conclusion that a product contains a defect which could create a substantial risk of injury to the public, presents an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death, or violates a federal safety standard. Hoover did not do – which warranted the fine.