The Instant Pot pressure cooker has been named in yet another lawsuit.
This one was filed by a California woman who claims that she was injured while using the pressure cooker. She filed her Instant Pot lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on March 2, 2022.
Plaintiff Able to Open the Lid While Cooker Still Under Pressure
According to her complaint, the plaintiff was cooking with her Instant Pot pressure cooker on March 12, 2020. She was able to rotate and open the lid while the cooker was still under pressure. This allowed the scalding hot contents to be forcefully ejected from the cooker onto her. She suffered from serious and substantial burn injuries.
The plaintiff claims that the incident occurred as a result of the failure of the cooker’s supposed safety mechanisms, which purport to keep the consumer safe while using the device. She brings counts of strict products liability, negligent products liability, and breach of warranties, and seeks compensatory and special damages.
Instant Brands Boasts of 10 Safety Features
Like most other pressure cooker manufacturers, Instant Brands, Inc., which makes the Instant Pot pressure cooker, advertises its products as being convenient, dependable, and safe. In the owner’s manual, the manufacturer claims that its pressure cooker includes a safety feature to disable the cooker and flash a warning if the lid is not positioned correctly.
The manufacturer also uses numerous media outlets, including infomercials, social media websites like YouTube, and third-party retailers to spread its message of safety. On one particular video entitled “Getting to Know Your New Instant Pot IP-DUO,” the company notes that consumers don’t need to be afraid of the cooker, as it has “10 safety features built in.”
In a similar video spokesperson Laura Pazzaglia, founder of the website “Hip Pressure Cooking,” boasts of the cooker’s 10 safety features, stating that this “new model detects the position of the lid” and “once the lid is locked, and the contents are under pressure, there’s no way to open the pressure cooker.”
The plaintiff notes that according to the owner’s manual accompanying each unit sold, Instant Brands misleads the consumer into believing that the device is reasonably safe for its normal, intended use. She says she used the cooker to prepare a meal for herself and her family, but it failed to properly prevent the lid from being removed while the unit remained pressurized.
Other Pressure Cookers Reported to Have Similar Problems
This case joins many others that have been filed against various pressure cooker manufacturers. All raise similar allegations about the devices failing to operate as advertised, with users suffering from severe burn injuries that occur when the lid is removed while the contents are still under high pressure.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued several pressure cooker recalls because of these and other problems. A 2020 Crock-Pot recall affected nearly one million 6-Quart Express Crock Multi-Cookers with lid-locking defects. At the time of that recall, the manufacturer was aware of at least 99 burn injuries associated with these cookers.
Exclusively focused on representing plaintiffs, especially in mass tort litigation, Eric Chaffin prides himself on providing unsurpassed professional legal services in pursuit of the specific goals of his clients and their families. Both his work and his cases have been featured in the national press, including on ABC’s Good Morning America.
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