Products Liability Research Paper

Law and Ethics in the Business Environment

Products Liability Research Paper

Assignment 4

Drake Blump

LEG 500

June 10, 2011

Professor Lynn Maclin, J.D.

Describe the company and the product safety issue that led to the lawsuit.

A company that I chose that misled the consumers and later lead to lawsuits is Mattel. The company was established in 1945 by “Ruth and Elliott Handler and Harold "Matt" Matson (Mattel is a combination of Elliott and Matt's names).” (Patten 2007) The company was initially involved in the manufacture of wood furniture but gradually deviate towards making children toys. Mattel sold toys and became a famous name by attracting children through the advertisement of product like “Barbie dolls”. They experienced sporadic interests from consumers in the decade after it was founded and almost went bankrupt. Through reformation and restructure of the company, the company regained consumer confidence and became a public incorporation. The company stock trades at New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with the acronym “MAT” according to the Forbes.com. Mattel Incorporated extended its business into the international market which later became an international household name.

The Mattel Company, the maker of kids’ toys that includes action figure toys and dolls recalled several numbers of toys because of the content “lead paint” as part of the cover used to paint the toys in the early years of the 21st century. “According to Mattel, all the toys were made by a contract manufacturer in China.” (Story 2007) Mattel, “the world’s largest manufacturer of toy-related products,” (Wisner 2012) has to recall vast number of their products from the American economy because of the safety hazards that revolves around the “China made products” which was later prohibited to be sold in the American economy for quite a while.

The company announced numerous recalls of most of their products during the same year which prompt the government to file a...