Jenifer Keenan was quoted extensively in a Compliance Week article on the new Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) database of safety-related product complaints that will officially launch on March 11. The database is not without controversy; one of the biggest concerns is that the regulation allows “virtually any entity to submit complaints to the database,” according to Keenan. Also, since the CPSC won’t police reports before publication on the database, “there’s a real concern that the database doesn’t distinguish between complaints that are submitted by a consumer versus complaints that are submitted by a plaintiff’s lawyer who is motivated to drum up business, and that really opens up the possibility for abuse.”
Another issue: after a complaint is filed, the CPSC has five business days to send a report to the named manufacturer, which then has 10 business days to respond before the complaint is posted. “[That turnaround is] pretty difficult [for a manufacturer] to do, and certainly a company won’t be able to adequately investigate a matter within that 10-day period,” Keenan said.
She also noted that “[w]e are definitely encouraging all of our consumer product manufacturing clients to register with the database.”