Columnist who is injured by an immersion blender finds other mishap stories, and a lawsuit
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A columnist who Googled “immersion blender” learned she is not the only one who suffered a mishap while trying to pry food out of the blades.
Writing in the New York Times, writer Alexandra Jacobs tells how she injured her fingers with the hand-held blender. It’s important to unplug the blender before cleaning or touching the blades, she says, but she found several people who didn’t take the precaution.
A lawsuit filed on Nov. 30 in Louisiana cites an accident with a blender known as a SmartStick. The plaintiff injured her hand while making a milkshake. Her lawyer, Robert Rimes, is seeking $50,000 in damages, but says a product modification would also be helpful.
Cuisinart spokeswoman Mary Rodgers didn’t discuss the lawsuit specifically, but she told the Times that the product has “warning verbiage” in large type on the handle. “We’ve had discussions over the years about how maybe you could enclose the blade or something,” she said, “but the way the blender functions, the food has to be sucked up to where the blade is, so that hasn’t materialized.”
“It’s like anything else,” Rodgers told the newspaper. “If you have a knife and you aren’t paying attention, not thinking about exactly what you’re doing, if you touch it, you’re going to get cut.”
