Toymaker Henry Gordy International Inc. has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $1.1 million over a dart gun set linked to three deaths, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said last Friday.
Its Auto Fire Target Sets were sold exclusively by Family Dollar Stores Inc. between September 2005 and January 2009 for about $1.50 each. Each set came with a toy gun, darts and a small target.
The commission has provisionally accepted the settlement with the Plainfield, New Jersey, company, the CPSC said in a statement.
“In agreeing to the settlement, Henry Gordy denies CPSC staff allegations as to the existence of a defect or that it knowingly violated the law,” the statement said.
CPSC staff alleged that Henry Gordy knew around May 2006 that its Auto Fire Target Set was defective because the soft plastic toy dart could pose a choking hazard. However, the company failed to report the defect, the agency said.
CPSC staff also said that Henry Gordy “made a material misrepresentation” during agency’s investigation in 2009 by not reporting all the information the company had.
The CPSC and Family Dollar Stores announced the recall of about 1.8 million of the sets in May 2010 because Henry Gordy refused to conduct the recall, the CPSC statement said.
“By that time, there were three deaths associated with the target set,” the agency said.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Jerry Norton and Steve Orlofsky)
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