Stephen Gass, inventor of SawStop, amid rows of patents.

They crowded in for the hot dog show.

An Oscar Meyer wiener, serving as proxy for a finger, was pushed into the spinning blade of a table saw. The demonstration, at the International Woodworkers Fair in Atlanta, mimicked the way gruesome table saw injuries often occur. But this saw was equipped with a safety device called SawStop that allowed the blade to distinguish between wood and flesh, and to stop fast enough to prevent serious harm. Sure enough, the blade came to a dead stop in about three one-thousandths of a second, leaving the dog with only a minor nick.

Table saw accidents are painful, life-changing and expensive. Each year, more than 67,000 U.S. workers and do-it-yourselfers suffer blade contact injuries, according to government estimates, including more than 33,000 injuries treated in emergency rooms and 4,000 amputations. 

Gerald Wheeler had other numbers on his mind as he watched hot dog meet blade that day in August, 2002. As the operator of a wood shop in Hot Springs, Ark., Wheeler was all too aware of the unforgiving nature of table saws. Not long before, two of his employees had been maimed within a few weeks of each other. Wheeler felt awful about the injuries, the loss of two good workers, the $95,000 in medical bills, the doubling of his workers compensation rates.

Wheeler thought: If only this had come along sooner. He took out his Visa card to order two of the saws, but was told none were available. As the SawStop guys explained, they had been seeking licensing deals with the big power tool makers, but had found no takers.

Faced with the prospect of never getting the invention to market, the little company, also known as SawStop, eventually started making its own saws. Since the first went on sale in 2004, SawStop says it has recorded 2,000 “finger saves”—customer reports of  accidents likely to have caused disfiguring injuries with conventional saws, but that resulted in minor cuts or a few stitches at most (SawStop also acknowledges two reports of amputations.).

“Bravo!” a man named Frank Oslick emailed SawStop, explaining that he had lost two fingers and part of his thumb in a table saw accident when he was 14. “I have not lived a single day without regretting that accident,” he wrote. “If your device prevents even one person from going through what I have gone through it is a world class accomplishment.”

However, SawStop still makes the only saws with skin-sensing technology, and accounts for a tiny fraction of sales. Tens of thousands of fingers have been sliced off since the system was invented, but the rest of the industry, which is self-regulating, has been allowed to go on as before.

Over the years, top saw makers and the Power Tool Institute, their trade group, have defended the design of their saws and the decision to snub SawStop.

They’ve argued that injury numbers have been inflated and that the government’s estimate of $2.36 billion in annual costs to society from table saw accidents—including medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering—is exaggerated. They say the market for popular, lightweight saws costing as little as $100 would be destroyed by the added expense of SawStop. They note that under some circumstances, SawStop can stop a blade without skin contact–such as when the blade touches conductive materials like metal or very wet wood. In such cases, the owner usually has to replace the blade and an electronic cartridge.

But as court records and testimony have shown, the companies rejected the safety advance for another reason, too: They worried that if a way to prevent severe injuries got traction in the market, they would face liability for accidents with conventional saws.

Even so, they have had to defend lawsuits. About 150 have been filed in recent years, focusing on the companies’ decision not to use available safety technology.

The industry is also trying to keep the Consumer Product Safety Commission from requiring injury reduction systems on all table saws—either SawStop or something similar. Indeed, another firm, Massachusetts-based Whirlwind Tool Co., says it has developed a “proximity detection” systems that will shut down a saw when a hand comes close to the blade.

But the industry may have little to fear from the commission. The agency has been wrestling with the issue, on and off, for 15 years. So far, its most definitive act has been to give SawStop an award for safety innovation. It will be at least next year before the agency adopts a regulation, if it ever does.

The SawStop story is about an industry’s ability to resist a major safety advance that could, by now, have prevented countless disfiguring injuries, but might have been bad for business. It highlights the endless due process that makes it virtually impossible for regulators to enact safety measures over the unified objections of industry.

It’s also something of a David-and-Goliath story–though in this case David, rather than carry a sling, is armed to the teeth with patents.

Several industry representatives declined interview requests or did not return calls and emails seeking comment. The Robert Bosch Tool Corp. provided a statement: “Safety has historically been one of the Bosch principles…and is reflected in our slogan ‘Invented for life.’”

Birth of SawStop

Stephen Gass is energetic and intense, a trimly built man of 49 whose home near Portland, Ore, is a manageable drive from some of his favorite whitewater kayaking runs. He grew up on a horse farm in Eastern Oregon, and was taught woodworking by his father. He earned a doctorate in physics and a law degree, then joined a patent law firm in Portland, but retained his interest in building things.

Gass created an elaborate workshop behind his house. For some reason, while out there on a fall day in 1999 he was struck by a question: Would it be possible to stop a saw blade quickly enough to keep it from slicing off your fingers? After a series of calculations and with parts you could buy at Radio Shack, he showed it could be done.

The invention involves running a weak electrical current through the saw blade. When a person comes in contact with the blade, the body absorbs part of the signal. An electronic sensor detects the change in current and activates a spring. The spring jams an aluminum wedge between the teeth of the blade, which acts as a brake. The blade also drops below the surface of the table. It all happens in so few milliseconds that, unless the hand is moving unusually fast when it hits the blade, the injury typically is minor.

One of the mysteries is why the power tool industry, with its engineering prowess, didn’t invent SawStop before Gass did.  Maybe he was smarter. Or maybe the industry didn’t do it because it didn’t need to.

There were no clear financial or legal incentives. Table saws are a must-have tool for millions of construction workers, cabinet makers and do-it-yourselfers. In the U.S., there are about 9.5 million of them in use, according to industry figures. Of about 500,000 sold each year, 85 percent are supplied by members of the Cleveland-based Power Tool Institute, including such well-known brands as Black & Decker, DeWalt, Makita, Skil, Bosch and Ryobi.

For decades, the companies were shielded from liability by a few unquestioned assumptions: Namely, that table saws were inherently dangerous; that everyone knew this; that accidents typically involved carelessness or failure to follow directions; therefore, when people got hurt it was their own fault. As an industry lawyer told a jury: “This is a table saw. It cuts wood. And if you’re not careful, you can get injured.”

Emotionally and financially, “it’s devastating.”–Adam Thull

Adam Thull’s arm after surgery. (Photo courtesy of Adam Thull.)

Listen to his story:

By Lilly Fowler

Adam Thull was building a checkout counter for a local bookstore when he noticed a wood panel falling off the edge of his table. As he lunged to catch it, his right forearm got caught on the blade of his Ryobi table saw – and the machine quickly cut completely through one of his forearm bones and a nerve.

Thull, 32, who was working at his shop at home in the small community of Crosslake, Minn., was airlifted to a hospital. That was the beginning of a medical odyssey that has included seven surgeries and visits to a specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., more than 200 miles away. Read more.

Saw designs are governed by a voluntary standard worked out between an industry-dominated technical committee and Underwriters Laboratories. When SawStop came along, the voluntary standard called for a guard that fit like a hood over the blade. Because a hand can slip under the guard, many thousands of injuries occurred even with the guard in place. Usually, however, the guard wasn’t being used. Because it limited visibility, had to be removed for certain cuts, and took a long time to detach and put on again, most people worked without it. Critics said the guard did more to protect the manufacturers than users.

In a letter to Underwriters Laboratory in April, 1998, an engineer for the CPSC linked the high injury toll to poor design of the guard. Said the engineer, Caroleene Paul:  “Experienced saw users comment that ‘the typical stock guard that comes with many saws is so frustrating to mount, align, adjust, remove and work with, you’re tempted to leave it off permanently.”

Members of the Power Tool Institute insisted there was nothing wrong with the guard. Following a December, 1999 meeting, Paul summarized their position: “Education is the only way to affect the injury hazard patterns seen. Education, not redesigning the guard, is needed to convince the operators to use the blade guard.” The institute pledged to do its bit by making a video.

SawStop wrecked this way of thinking. Saw makers now had the ability to prevent the tragedies they knew were going to happen, that had always happened. For this reason, Gass thought, his invention should be an easy sell.

“I couldn’t imagine that anyone would not want to put this on the saws that they were offering to people,” he said.

He recruited three friends from the law firm, all named David, to put up seed money for the new venture. The industry’s initial reaction was not encouraging. Gass recalled being told by one executive: “The marketing guys say safety doesn’t sell.”

Hoping to stir grass-roots interest, Gass and the Davids made their first trip to the woodworkers fair in August, 2000. They were sent to the nosebleed section—a tiny booth in a conference room on the third floor of the Atlanta Convention Center. But as word of the hot dog demonstration spread through the fair, they were soon drawing crowds. SawStop was awarded a top prize for technological advancement.

Saw makers also took notice and issued invitations. Soon Gass and his partners were visiting corporate offices of Emerson Electric; Black & Decker (now Stanley Black & Decker), Ryobi and Bosch. In November, 2000, they briefed members of the Power Tool Institute in Cleveland.

The companies seemed intrigued but wary. SawStop vice president David Fanning recalled being asked at Ryobi and Black & Decker: “Have you been to the CPSC? Our response was: ‘What’s the CPSC? ‘ ” Gass said a Black & Decker executive also warned: “If you guys don’t cooperate with us, the industry is going to get together and squish you.”

Still, the SawStop men were stoked, maybe even cocky. “We think you don’t have any choice here,” Gass said he told an executive of one company: “It’s the right thing to do. And if you don’t do it, you’re going to be liable for the injuries—and there’s a lot of injuries happening.”

Their prospects seemed to rise when CPSC engineers, in July, 2001, announced the results of a technical evaluation. “The SawStop concept is valid and the prototype impressively demonstrates its feasibility.” Ann Brown, then head of the agency, awarded SawStop a Chairman’s Commendation for safety innovation.

Negotiations were held with several companies. Talks with Ryobi advanced farthest, then collapsed under mysterious circumstances.

A leading manufacturer and supplier to Home Depot, Ryobi is based in Anderson, S.C., and is a subsidiary of Techtronics, Inc. of Hong Kong.

In January, 2002, Ryobi sent SawStop a signed licensing agreement. It called for Ryobi to investigate SawStop’s feasibility, and to incorporate it in Ryobi saws within 18 months if it proved feasible.  SawStop would get a royalty equal to 3 percent of the wholesale cost of each saw, with the fee rising as high as 8 percent should the technology be widely adopted.

Gass said a small typo led him to return the contract to Ryobi’s general counsel, who Gass said told him he would immediately fix the mistake and mail the contract back. Days turned into weeks, then months. Gass said he got repeated assurances that Ryobi wanted to proceed, but the contract never came back.

Years later, in the trial of a lawsuit against Ryobi, a company lawyer explained it this way: “Ryobi decided that it did not want to go forward with this project,” he said. Ryobi was going through a corporate acquisition, the SawStop deal took “a back seat”, and “eventually Ryobi lost interest.”

Robert Bugos, the former general counsel Gass said had strung him along, put it another way in a deposition. “There was negotiation back and forth,” Bugos said. “Our position was always that SawStop was asking too much.”

Lawsuit Worries

However, testimony and documents reveal the industry also feared liability exposure should SawStop gain a foothold. According to testimony by David Peot, Ryobi’s former director of advanced technologies: “There certainly was a feeling that if a single company invents or improves a product that could have an effect on product liability, then other manufacturers could be at a disadvantage if they don’t have that on their product.”

Without naming SawStop, an April, 2002 Bosch memo warned of the threat from “competitive technology.”  The “expectation will be that the most severe injuries will be mild to moderate lacerations and that amputations will be virtually eliminated,” it said. This “will create a new and significant liability concern for our corporation because of this enhanced safety performance.”

Or, as minutes of the Power Tool Institute’s product liability committee put it: “Liability exposure has increased based on the product’s introduction at IWF [International Woodworkers Fair].”

Gass recalled being told by Peter Domeny, then chairman of the committee and Bosch’s director of product safety, that SawStop had kept him awake nights wondering how the industry could defend itself in court. Domeny was questioned about this in 2008, when his deposition was taken in the case of a Pennsylvania man who suffered the amputation of four fingers.

“We had discussions as far as the liability implication, but not in that form as he [Gass] quotes it,” Domeny replied. “I don’t think I have discussed my sleep patterns with Mr. Gass.” Domeny declined to be interviewed.

Gass said he came to realize the threat his invention posed. “What the industry saw as a problem was not the amputations and injuries occurring on their product,” he said, “but the advent of a technology that could prevent those injuries. That was the problem we created.”

Early on, Gass and two of the Davids had quit the law firm to give full time to SawStop. Having failed to license the technology, they faced a stark choice: Either go back to patent law and let the invention die, or find the capital to make their own saws. They chose the latter, Gass said, and raised $3 million from about 30 investors.

Gass, president of SawStop, LLC, at company headquarters near Portland, Ore.

The industry response was unprecedented. Five companies, including Black & Decker, Bosch and Ryobi, formed a joint venture to develop their own injury reduction system. To head off possible anti-trust problems, they told the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission what they were doing. Their notice said they would pursue “research and development of technology for power saw blade contact injury avoidance, including skin sensing systems, blade braking systems, and/or blade guarding systems.”

Years later, Peot, the former Ryobi executive, still seemed stunned by the move. “The people who belong to the Power Tool Institute are very fierce competitors,” he testified. “Never before in my 30, 35 years of working with the Power Tool Institute had I ever been exposed to something where they said let’s get together and jointly develop something.”

The joint venture ended in 2009, when members said they had developed a system superior to SawStop. It has yet to be incorporated into a single saw.

Their system is designed to retract the blade into the table immediately on skin contact. Unlike SawStop, it does not use a brake, which can damage the blade. Representatives of Ryobi, Black & Decker and Bosch did not return calls about when, or if, the technology will be used. Industry comments filed with the CPSC asserted that SawStop’s patents were holding them back–potentially forcing them to pay royalties or engage in expensive patent litigation to introduce their system.

SawStop, for its part, put its first saws on the market in 2004 and has sold about 40,000 since. Along with flesh-detection technology, the company’s saws came with an important safety device called a riving knife that had been mostly limited to models sold in Europe. A riving knife is a curved steel blade that cuts the risk of “kickback”, which occurs when a piece of wood suddenly jerks while being cut, sometimes pulling the operator’s hand into the blade.

Gerald Wheeler, who had been wowed by the hot dog show, got two of the first saws. In March, 2006, Carl Seymour, a foreman at his shop, accidentally touched a whirring blade. A photo on SawStop’s website shows Seymour beaming in triumph as he lifts the wounded thumb, which looks like it has a paper cut.

“You couldn’t wipe the smile off him (Seymour) after this,” Wheeler told FairWarning, saying he, too, was “totally ecstatic.” All saws should have this technology, Wheeler said. “I mean, we’re dealing with human beings.”

Shot Across the Bow

No longer having anything to lose, SawStop fired another shot. It organized a petition signed by more than 300 woodworkers, shop teachers and others, asking the CPSC to regulate. Filed in April, 2003, it called for a performance standard that would most likely require SawStop or something like it.

Gass told Fairwarning the idea came from Caroleene Paul, the CPSC engineer. Given the commission’s limited resources, Gass said Paul told him, the agency would be more likely to investigate the issue if petitioned to do so. (A commission spokesman confirmed this account.)

In July, 2006, commissioners voted 2-1 to instruct their staff to draft a document starting the rulemaking process. Called an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, it would have been published in the Federal Register with a request for public comments.

Then things took a bizarre turn. Within days of the vote, commission Chairman Hal Stratton, who had voted yes, resigned to join a law firm. The resulting 1-1 stalemate meant the rulemaking notice could not be approved. This was during the Bush administration, which was stridently anti-regulation. The commission would go three years before getting a third commissioner and again having a quorum.

Battling in the Courts

Even as the threat of regulation eased, the industry faced trouble in the courts.

Carlos Osorio was a computer technician from Colombia who moved to the Boston area in 2003 to be near his girlfriend. Unable to find work in his field, he took a job as a flooring installer and learned to use a table saw.

He was working at a home in Lexington, Mass., in April, 2005 when a piece of flooring got stuck in the Ryobi saw and Osorio’s hand slid into the blade. “There was blood on my face, my body. It was everywhere,” Osorio testified. “I was able to see my tendons.”

Screaming in pain, Osorio and a co-worker ran into the street and flagged down a motorist, who called 911. The first of five surgeries lasted 12 hours and reattached Osorio’s pinky finger. Another transferred tendons from a toe to his hand in an attempt to restore movement. Osorio said he endured so much pain that one doctor suggested he have two of the injured fingers surgically amputated. Osoriio had 95 physical therapy sessions. His medical bills topped $384,000. Now living in Florida, he still has limited use of his left hand. “The damage that was done to my hand, it’s something that stays with you for the rest of your life,” he said in an interview. “I think the manufacturers should think less about cost, but more about people who are using the saws.”

During the trial of his lawsuit in February, 2010, in federal court in Boston, Osorio admitted he was working without a saw guard, and said guards were not used by others on his crew.

Before SawStop, this fact alone would have made a successful lawsuit unthinkable. But Gass testified about his efforts to license SawStop to Ryobi and others. He said that Osorio almost certainly would have escaped serious injury had SawStop or another skin-detection system been in use. The jury awarded damages of $1.5 million.

SawStop was a “game changer,” said Osorio’s attorney Richard Sullivan, whose Wellesley, Mass., firm has been involved in most of the recent cases. The industry position was “ ‘Hey, don’t blame us,’ ” Sullivan said. “Now with Saw Stop it was ‘Oops, we actually can prevent these accidents from taking place.’”

About 70 of the roughly 150 cases have been settled, said Sullivan. Only two, besides Osorio, have been tried. A Los Angeles case last year ended in a hung jury, then was settled. In the other, tried last July in Chicago, Ryobi was victorious.

The plaintiff was Brandon Stollings, who suffered the amputation of two fingers while installing flooring at his mother’s house in Wisconsin in May, 2007. Stollings, then 23, had been captain of his high school basketball team, and had passed on college to pursue his goal of becoming a homebuilder. He testified that after the blade sliced into his hand, he began running around in circles in his mother’s yard, screaming in pain and terror about what had just happened.

Working with table saw. (iStockphoto)

“ ‘Am I ever going to be able to do carpentry?’ “ he remembered thinking. “ ‘If I cut off my ring finger, who’s going to want to marry me if I can’t even put a ring on my finger? ‘ ” Lying in the ambulance, he told his mother: “ ‘Just let me die’…because I thought my life was over.”

After nine hours of surgery the ring finger was reattached, but Stollings lost the index finger. Though five years had passed between the accident and his court appearance, Stollings said he remained self-conscious about his hand. “If I’m meeting new people, my hands will be in my pocket,” he said. “I never had this hand really out in the open.”

Stollings, who had years of experience with table saws, testified that he was not using a guard and never did because it got in the way. Gass testified that Stollings would have escaped serious injury if the saw had skin-sensing technology.

“If the manufacturers had to pay the cost of those injuries,” Gass said, “they would have adopted technology like this within months of the time they heard about it instead of looking for excuse after excuse to delay for year after year.”

This time, however, Ryobi’s lawyers shifted the focus from the maiming of a young man to a purported conspiracy between plaintiffs attorneys and Gass—designed to bleed the industry by, in the case of the lawyers, filing lawsuits; and in the case of Gass, forcing manufacturers to adopt SawStop. The jury found Ryobi not liable.

Wall of Patents

SawStop’s headquarters is in the back of a business park in the Portland suburb of Tualatin, next to a marshy field favored by egrets and geese. About 40 employees occupy the hive of offices, workbenches and warehouse space. Saws aren’t actually manufactured here; as with nearly all others sold in the U.S., SawStop’s models are made to its specifications in Taiwan.

Rows of gleaming patents for saw components cover entire walls. Those patents have become an obsession of the industry as it fights to keep the CPSC off its back.

Legislation passed by Congress in 2008 had resuscitated the agency, adding funding and expanding it to five commissioners. Yet the table saw issue stalled. In November, 2010, —the National Consumers League fired off a protest letter to commission chairman Inez Tenenbaum.

“While this…languishes before the Commission, with no action taken by previous CPSC officials, every day ten new amputations associated with the use of table saws occur,” the letter said. “The hazards posed by table saws are unacceptable, especially when we have the means to prevent these accidents.”

The thrust of the letter, said the league’s executive director Sally Greenberg, was “what the heck have you guys been doing over there?”

The league arranged for several injury victims to meet with commissioners. In October, 2011, they voted 5-0 to publish an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking–the step nearly taken five years earlier.

In the notice, the CPSC pegged the average cost of a table saw injury at $35,000—for a total cost to society of $2.36 billion for the estimated 67,300 injuries per year.

The Power Tool Institute disputed the estimate as highly exaggerated. And in comments with the commission in March, 2012, it said a federal regulation would grant a “monopolistic advantage’’ to SawStop, whose patents might shut out rival safety systems, such as the one developed by the joint venture.

“There can be little question that Mr. Gass and the SawStop company primarily are motivated by their own monetary gain,” the institute declared, “rather than purely to improve public safety.”

Further, the industry reminded the commission of a legal constraint that could block regulation. By law, the commission must defer to voluntary standards that could adequately improve safety. As a result, by revising a voluntary standard, or by simply working on revisions, an industry might be able to forestall regulation indefinitely.

The industry had, in fact, made a couple of changes to its voluntary standard. A 2005 revision provided for use of a riving knife; another in 2007 called for an improved blade guard.

Since late 2007, hundreds of thousands of saws with the new guard had come into the market. Therefore, the industry said, before adopting a regulation the CPSC must investigate the impact of the changes. The agency has agreed to study consumer usage of the new guards.

“This is a serious hazard which has greatly impacted far too many lives,” commission spokesman Scott Wolfson told FairWarning. “This is a rulemaking that can make a difference…if we can reach the final rulemaking stage.”

Ann Brown, who left the chairmanship soon after giving the commendation to SawStop in 2001, told FairWarning she was “shocked” that the issue remains unresolved. “The industry has managed to delay every step of the way.”

Hal Stratton, chairman until 2006, said he was not shocked. “How could I be, after being there and experiencing working at the agency?” he asked. “The way the law is written, there’s a lot of hurdles to get over to get a regulation passed.”

Expecting little from the CPSC, SawStop tried another way to force the issue. Last year, it lobbied the California legislature to pass a bill requiring injury reduction technology for table saws sold in the state. California is such a huge market that companies forced to meet its standard sometimes apply the changes across whole product lines. The bill was defeated, however.

SawStop could make plenty of money if a table saw standard were adopted, but is profitable just selling its saws, according to Gass.

“I feel like I’m doing a good thing,” he said, adding that he would not take “a lot of moral credit.  I’m doing what I also think is in my financial interest.”

Lilly Fowler contributed to this story.

Adam Thull with his wife, Courtney, 4-year-old daughter, Stevie, and 8-year-old son, Cyril. (Kelli Engstrom)

Adam Thull was building a checkout counter for a local bookstore when he noticed a wood panel falling off the edge of his table. As he lunged to catch it, his right forearm got caught on the blade of his Ryobi table saw – and the machine quickly cut completely through one of his forearm bones and a nerve.

Thull, 32, who was working at his shop at home in the small community of Crosslake, Minn., was airlifted to a hospital. That was the beginning of a medical odyssey that has included seven surgeries and visits to a specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., more than 200 miles away.

Still, after three years of treatment on his ulnar bone and nerve, Thull has yet to recover full use of his arm. He also remains unable to work and reluctant to go through surgery and a lengthy recuperation again. “I can’t endure anymore. I need to stay out of bed before my mind goes nuts,” Thull said.

Thull acknowledges that when the accident occurred in May, 2010, he wasn’t using the saw guard, which fits like a hood over the top of the blade. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, most operators work without the guard at least part of the time because it limits visibility and must be removed for some cuts.

But Thull is suing Ryobi, its parent company Techtronic Industries and the saw’s retailer, Home Depot, in federal district court in Duluth. He contends that his saw was defective because Ryobi had failed to adopt flesh detection technology, a system that can virtually eliminate serious injuries by immediately shutting down the blade on contact with skin.

The defendants deny responsibility for the incident, one of thousands of serious accidents suffered by American workers and do-it-yourselfers using saws from the major manufacturers that lack skin sensing technology.

Thull, who said he “kind of grew up with a hammer in his [my] hand,” had planned to continue supporting his wife and two young children with his home-based woodworking business. At the time of the accident, his venture had been profitable for close to three years.

(Photo courtesy of Adam Thull)

But now Thull’s wife, Courtney, struggles to keep the family financially afloat on her own. For about a year after the accident, Courtney handled a night shift as a nurse and also worked at two coffee shops, one of which was 75 miles away. The stress of juggling three jobs, Thull said, sent the couple back into marriage counseling.

His wife “went from raising her children to not seeing her children,” Thull said. Even so, “There’s not a way to compensate for me losing my arm no matter how hard she works.”

Thull said he went from “working and providing a life for my family to being the stay-at-home parent. Not only is that emotionally devastating to us, but, financially, it’s devastating as well because she can’t produce the money,” Thull said, adding that he is still unsure what he will do in the future to help support the family.

His role as a father has suffered, too. Their daughter was just one-year-old when the accident occurred, and Thull said, “I couldn’t even change her diaper at the beginning, with my left hand. It’s not something you could do one-handed. You can’t pick a child up and carry her around and do that stuff with only one arm.”

Thull said he and his wife weren’t able to keep up payments on their student loans, and they are now in default. As a result, he doesn’t see going back to school as an option.

If his family wasn’t getting a break on their rent by living in a home his uncle owns, Thull said, they would be out on the street.

Tom Corbett was helping remodel the front entryway of a home in Manchester, Mass., two years ago when suddenly his life changed forever.

A piece of wood he was trying to cut jammed in his table saw, and his hand was thrown into the blade. He still struggles to remember all of the horrible details, but he’s haunted by the fact that four of his fingers were severed. “I just know within a second my fingers were on the ground,” he said.

That’s how Corbett became one of the thousands of Americans suffering amputations or other serious injuries in table saw accidents every year.

As often is the case, Corbett, 43, wasn’t a novice when it comes to working with wood. He has done carpentry since the age of 14 and says he has used almost every type of table saw on the market.

The accident cost him his pinky and ring finger. Even though doctors were able to reattach two other fingers, he will never have full use of them and he still suffers severe pain.

Corbett, who is suing the table saw manufacturer, already has gone through a half-dozen surgeries and more operations are possible.

He says every time he has surgery, he needs physical therapy three or four times a week to try to break up the scar tissue that builds up. And although the operations straighten Corbett’s fingers, they have always curled back after a short time. The last surgery involved freeing up tendons and joints with the hope that he will gain more movement in his hand.

“I’m starting to get a little leery whether or not they’re ever going to be able to do anything for me,” Corbett said.

(Photo courtesy of Tom Corbett)

At the time of the accident Corbett was covered by workers compensation insurance through his employer, JW Custom Carpentry, based in Byfield, Mass. That pays for Corbett’s medical bills, which he estimates could be as high as $500,000. Corbett, who is separated and helps support his three children, said workers compensation also provides 60 percent of his previous regular wage, but that isn’t enough for him and his family to get by.

Doctors tell him that he’s unlikely ever to work as a carpenter again, the job he has done all of his adult life. That means, Corbett said, he will have to turn to “something that I probably don’t like as much. I don’t know what that could be. I was never really anybody to work in an office, my work was always hands on. So I’m really not sure what I’m going to do.”

Corbett is suing Black & Decker, which made the DeWalt table saw he was using when he got hurt. He blames the company for not installing the available technology that could have prevented the accident by shutting down the blade immediately upon skin contact.

Black & Decker denies responsibility for the accident.

Corbett acknowledges that he wasn’t using the tool’s safety guard. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, most saw operators at least part of the time work without the guard, which fits like a hood over the blade, because it limits visibility and must be removed for some cuts.

But Corbett hopes his lawsuit will spur the table saw industry to change and adopt more effective technology that would stop the blade on contact with skin.

“I think anything they can do to save anybody from going through this, I think they should do it,” Corbett said.

“I would never have thought anybody like myself could ever have this type of injury at all. I consider myself so experienced and safety conscious. So I’d say if it can happen to me it can happen to anybody.”

“My life changed in less than a second it seemed like, from being able to do anything I wanted to not being able to do anything,” he added. “I just feel like a rock. I just sit here, and I feel like I’m kind of useless.”

A fatal motorcycle accident in San Diego County on Jan. 30, 2011. (CAL FIRE San Diego)

The results were tragic but not surprising last May when Suzanne Randa and her fiance, Thomas Donohoe, crashed while riding Donohoe’s Harley Davidson on Highway 79 near the Southern California city of Loma Linda.

Donohoe, who was wearing a helmet meeting federal safety standards, escaped injury and walked away from the accident. Randa, 49, who wore a so-called novelty helmet that was cheap and stylish but offered no real protection, died at the scene after the  strap broke and her head slammed onto the pavement.

“I just don’t think these helmets should be permitted,” said Randa’s 23-year-old daughter, Kelli Meador, who still has her mother’s scarred turtle-shell headgear.

Even as more than 800,000 novelty helmets are sold in the U.S. every year, and as motorcycle crash deaths mount, federal regulators have never acted with urgency to crack down on the popular but flawed headgear. Proposals to limit sales of the novelty helmets have been delayed over and over again.

It’s not because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets safety standards for helmets, is ignorant of the problem. Six years ago NHTSA hired an independent lab to study seven novelty models, and found they all shared a distinguishing characteristic: they were worthless in a crash.

“All analyses gave a 100-percent probability of brain injuries and skull fracture, indicating that the person wearing the helmet will sustain fatal head injuries,” the evaluation found. It added: “Motorcycle riders who wear novelty helmets and believe that ‘something is better than nothing’ have a false sense of security regarding the protection afforded.”

It remains legal to make and sell novelty helmets as long as they aren’t falsely represented as meeting federal standards. Wearing them is clearly against the law only in a dozen or so states that require motorcyclists to wear helmets meeting the federal standard.

NHTSA says it is studying ways to limit sales and will have a proposal within a few weeks. That, however, would be only one step in an approval process that, even if successful, could take many months or years.

Suzanne Randa, who was killed last May in Southern California in a motorcycle crash while wearing a novelty helmet, with a grandson. (Courtesy of Kelli Meador)

So far the agency has gone no farther than to adopt a rule taking effect next month that it hopes will make it easier for police to spot helmets with fake safety labels. Meanwhile, sales of novelty helmets keep growing — as do the numbers of deaths among riders wearing them.

NHTSA officials declined to be interviewed for this article. A spokesman said the agency does not comment on issues that are the subject of a pending rulemaking.

The lack of resolve by NHTSA to tackle the threat troubles doctors, safety experts and families of crash victims. “It is a huge loophole,” said David Thom, an El Segundo, Calif., engineering consultant and helmet expert.

Numerous tests have shown that certified helmets – those meeting federal standards — save hundreds of lives every year, and cut the risk of a deadly accident by more than a third. They are widely considered the best tool available to prevent fatalities. Novelty helmets, by contrast, account for hundreds of deaths. That is contributing to a troubling trend, as FairWarning has reported, of rising motorcycle fatalities in recent years while traffic deaths generally have declined. The latest federal figures, for 2011, show motorcycle crashes taking 4,612 lives, more than doubling since the mid-1990s and now accounting for one in seven U.S. traffic deaths.

The inaction also spotlights how politics may trump public health considerations in the debate over motorcycle safety. Arguably the most effective strategy in combating substandard helmets has been limited by legislation promoted by rider groups. States including California and Virginia have prohibited state and local police from using motorcycle checkpoints to ticket violators of helmet laws and other rules of the road.

What’s more, even in some states where helmets are required, enforcement is often lax or inconsistent. It typically is left to the discretion of individual officers, many of whom don’t see it as a priority or who have trouble distinguishing the novelty helmets from the certified ones.

Consumer advocates say the situation cries out for changes. “There needs to be more done in eliminating the supply but also in making sure that states with helmet laws are going to crack down,” said Henry Jasny, general counsel of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a Washington-based watchdog group. “People just don’t want to touch it. It is hard to get leadership. It is too political.”

Novelty helmets first became popular as a symbol of resistance in states that required bikers to wear certified helmets. A fight to have California’s helmet law struck down in court was for years led by a man who was repeatedly arrested for violating the helmet law by wearing a baseball cap with a bogus “DOT,” or U.S. Department of Transportation, safety label on the back.

One group, BOLT of California, still takes the position that a state law requiring head protection can be met “so long as you have an object on your head that you claim is a helmet, and it has the letters ‘DOT’ on it.”

Jeff Miller, who suffered multiple skull fractures in a Vermont motorcycle crash last September, with his wife, Dawn.(Courtesy of Dawn Miller)

But other people also buy the helmets, drawn by the low cost and the misconception that they provide a measure of safety. “I am sure there are lots of people out there who do not appreciate the fact it does not provide any protection,” said Thom, the engineering consultant.

NHTSA’s helmet standard for manufacturers, known as Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 218, has been in place since 1974. As with other motor vehicle equipment regulations, it’s enforced through a kind of honor system. Manufacturers determine whether their helmets meet the standard, and attach a “DOT” sticker certifying compliance. The agency conducts spot checks only after the helmets are on the market, with help from independent labs. The numbers of those inspections were halved by NHTSA recently due to budget cuts.

The many helmets that, because of poor performance or false labeling, have gotten failing grades – as many as 30 percent to 40 percent every year – do little to inspire confidence that bad products are kept off the market. (Officials say the percentage is high because they focus testing on suspect helmets.) Critics also say the agency is slow to respond when problems are detected; it issued a consumer alert last year about a helmet made by a California manufacturer that was deemed defective more than three years earlier. (The agency has said that a bankruptcy filing by the helmet firm delayed the notice.)

Sales of novelty helmets have climbed even as the number of states requiring riders to wear helmets has declined. That’s partly because more and more riders are hitting the road. Also, the novelty helmets usually are about one-third the cost of a certified helmet. Some riders find comfort in their lighter weight, even though that is also what makes them dangerous.

It has also been relatively easy to pass them off as legal. The simple stickers NHTSA has required on certified helmets are easy to reproduce for anyone with a computer and printer, while other counterfeit versions are widely available over the Internet. For example, riders can buy two for a dollar at www.chopperstickers.com. The website says customers are responsible for how they use the stickers. The site’s operator anonymously goes on to tout the product, saying: “I have had one on my helmet for about a year now and it has held up fine in [sic] through all kinds of weather and abuse.”

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A rule that NHTSA hopes will make the stickers harder to copy by requiring that they be more detailed — first proposed during the Bush Administration — goes into effect in May. Yet people debate the difference the rule will make, and even NHTSA acknowledges it is unlikely to significantly reduce the annual death toll from motorcycle accidents.

NHTSA has estimated that as many as 754 people die each year in states with mandatory helmet laws because they wore novelty helmets instead of safe headgear, which amounts to nearly one in six rider fatalities nationwide. Yet in the 19 states that require riders of all ages to wear some form of protection, the novelty versions account for about one of every five helmets sold.

Cheap imports from Asia have dominated the novelty market in the U.S., even as some Asian governments have started cracking down on the headgear in their own countries. Another big distributor of novelty helmets, Voss Extreme Sports, is based in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Concerned about rising deaths, provincial officials last year banned motorcyclists from wearing novelty helmets.

Jeff Miller, who faces more surgery and therapy to recover from his head injury suffered in a motorcycle crash. (Courtesy of Dawn Miller)

Novelty Helmets are sold over the Internet by companies with names such as “Helmets Gone Wild” and “Iron Horse Helmets.” Iron Horse sells German World War II-styled novelty helmets, available in camouflage, gun metal, leather and chrome finishes; a “Bone Yard” model with skull-and-crossbones design, available in pink, blue and red; and a “Gladiator” helmet with spikes. Prices start at around $30, and top out with a glittery three-quarter shell model for $305.99 that resembles a ’70s disco ball.

Marketers of novelty helmets are unapologetic, dismissing safety concerns and saying they simply are accommodating consumer demand.

Todd Sobel, the founder and president of Birmingham, Ala.,-based Iron Horse, says that people who buy his helmets know what they are getting into. Most of his helmets, he says, are sold to people in states that do not require headgear, and who just want to look good. “They are not bought for safety. They are bought for style,” he said. He also makes the much-disputed assertion that the headgear provides at least some protection for people who otherwise would not wear anything on their head.

Novelty helmets are usually sold with disclaimers that they are not intended for highway use. But NHTSA is skeptical. The agency said in a notice two years ago that novelty helmets are “minimally used” by groups other than motorcycle riders, and are often sold online on the same websites as motorcycle gear. Its authority to regulate novelty helmets appeared bolstered last year by a change in federal law that puts motor vehicle equipment sold “with the apparent purpose” of safeguarding users within its jurisdiction.

The agency seemed to be getting serious about novelty helmets in 2007 when it subjected seven popular brands to testing by an independent lab. Six of the seven models, distributed by such firms as “Helmets R Us” and “Helmets, Etc.,” failed every phase of the three-part evaluation. In some cases the products allowed more than twice the legally permissible energy impact to the head from a hard fall.

Much of the problem was due to the flawed design of the outer shell and flimsy liners inside. But the straps didn’t work, either, separating on impact — meaning that even if the helmets were more substantial, they were unlikely to stay on a rider’s head and provide critical protection during a crash.

A novelty helmet for sale on the Internet.

Since April 2011, NHTSA says, it has considered developing a rule to crack down on the importation and distribution of novelty helmets. The agency has gone so far as to set an internal timetable for issuing a proposed rule and obtaining public comment. But it has twice postponed plans, most recently citing a need for “additional coordination.” The agency now says it intends to submit a proposal for review to the Office of Management and Budget by late this month.

Meanwhile, around the country, people continue to die and suffer grievous injuries. In Vermont, Jeff Miller, a truck driver who taught helmet safety for a local Harley dealer, crashed his bike into the back of an SUV last September, suffering multiple skull fractures; he was wearing a novelty helmet. “It is not like he didn’t know that the helmet he was wearing was not safe,” said his wife, Dawn. “He thought it was cool.” His medical bills already total more than $500,000 with more surgery and therapy to come. The family is looking to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for the poor, to help cover some of the costs.

California has also seen a rise in accidents involving novelty helmets. “It’s a trend we see quite often up here,” Ariel Gruenthal, deputy coroner in Northern California’s Humboldt County, said of a surge in novelty helmet- related deaths last summer. “We have had straps rip, helmets pop right off.”

“I realize it is a very personal decision, and a lot of people who ride motorcycles don’t want to be wearing a helmet at all, so they wear the bare minimum,” Gruenthal said. “I really encourage people to think about their safety and think about their family and everybody who will be left behind if something happens.”

Randa was a free spirit, who got married as a teenager, divorced, and then lived for a time raising her family on a chicken ranch. She told friends the best job she ever had was working the graveyard shift as a waitress at Denny’s. In a tragic irony, the father of two of her children was killed years ago in a head-on collision on the same road where she perished, just a few miles away.

According to her children, she struggled with alcohol, drug and gambling addictions, but lately seemed to have found happiness with Donohoe, 69, a retired electrician.

Motorcycles were a new adventure, and the experience both exhilarated and terrified her. “My mom was not what you call bike literate,” said Meador, her daughter. “She said it was fun. But then there were a couple of times when she said it was scary because [Donohoe] drove like an idiot. … She loved being on the back of the bike.”

Donohoe was headed to a doctor’s appointment at the VA hospital in Loma Linda when the crash occurred. “He was basically cutting through traffic, misjudged a car … and went down,” said Darren Meyer, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol. “As she tumbled down the road she took more impacts. … He did not even go to the hospital.”

Meyer said the choice of helmets “absolutely” made a difference in their fates.

Randa’s son, Tyler Meador, built a seven-foot cross, which he erected as a memorial near the crash site, with handprints of three of her children, in turquoise, her favorite color. Her children, to cover the cost of her funeral, raised money through an appeal on the Internet.

Donohoe was charged with vehicular manslaughter and with having a provisional motorcycle permit that did not allow him to carry passengers. He said he had purchased the novelty helmet from a roommate. “I tried to get her to get a helmet like mine,” he said, but Randa did not like how she looked in the DOT-certified helmet.

“Of course I feel a sense of responsibility,” he said, adding that he has a new point of view about novelty helmets following the tragedy. “I think they should be regulated. I don’t think they should ever be sold, period.”

(iStockphoto)

It’s about as secret as a lawsuit can get.

When the Consumer Product Safety Commission two years ago launched SaferProducts.gov, a database allowing consumers to report and learn about hazardous products, it was inevitable that some business would go to court to keep a customer’s complaint private.

But the first legal challenge is blazing new trails in judicial secrecy.

Thanks to closed-door hearings, sealed records and a 73-page ruling with large sections blacked out, even the most basic details are concealed. That includes the identity of the plaintiff — known only as “Company Doe” –along with its product and the incident that led to the complaint.

Adding to the mystery, the commission — for reasons it won’t disclose — decided not to appeal a federal judge’s ruling blocking the posting of the complaint and allowing the company to remain anonymous.

But consumer groups are crying foul, branding the ruling a serious violation of the public’s right to know. The groups—Consumers Union, Public Citizen and the Consumer Federation of America—have asked an appeals court to lift the veil of secrecy by unsealing records in the case.

Company Doe, contending that the groups have no standing in the lawsuit, has asked the court to dismiss the appeal.

Several legal experts said they know of no other case in which a company was allowed to use a fictitious name to protect its reputation.

“The general price tag for wanting to submit things to a court to get a ruling in your favor is that they become public,” said Richard Marcus, a law professor and expert on civil procedure at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

“We don’t have closed trials in this country,” Marcus said. “ We don’t allow witnesses to come in and testify wearing bags over their heads. Maybe there are some very, very, very unusual exceptions to that but that’s our general mode of operation.”

Joan E. Steinman, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law who has studied pseudonymous litigation, said plaintiffs who use pseudonyms in court usually are individuals who want to avoid disclosing details that could embarrass or even endanger them. In the landmark case of Roe vs. Wade, for example, Jane Roe was used as an alias for Norma L. McCorvey, the young woman who prompted a national debate on abortion rights.

Eight media companies have also filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the appeals court to unseal the records.

To keep the records sealed would create a dangerous precedent, said the brief by The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, and Tribune Company, among others. It “would vastly broaden the denial of access to court documents, crippling the press’s ability to report on ongoing litigation any time a corporate litigant wanted to avoid negative publicity,” the brief said.

Unusual circumstances

Experts say only in unusual circumstances, such as when national security is at stake, are so many records sealed in a court case.

Consumer advocates say that the decision in the Company Doe case also threatens the integrity of the consumer product database.

If the ruling stands, “companies who find themselves on the verge of having reports included in the database about their products are going to sue and are going to seek judicial secrecy,” said Scott Michelman, an attorney with Public Citizen.

Richard Marcus, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

The database was authorized under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. The law was prompted by several product-related scandals, including the discovery in the U.S. of Chinese-made toys tainted with unsafe levels of lead.

The Company Doe case against the commission came in October 2011, eight months after the database went public. It was aimed at a complaint submitted by a local government agency regarding a product from Company Doe that, the local agency said, had harmed a child.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission followed standard procedure by notifying Company Doe and giving it an opportunity to post a response to the complaint. But the company argued the complaint was inaccurate. The commission responded by writing four different versions of the grievance to eliminate any inaccuracies, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy Company Doe, and it eventually sued to keep the product complaint out of the database altogether.

Company Doe was represented by attorney Baruch A. Fellner of the powerhouse firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Fellner told FairWarning he could not discuss the case.

Last July, Federal District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. in Greenbelt, Md., issued the ruling in Company Doe’s favor, noting that a link between the product and the harm suffered by the child had not been established.

Most records sealed

Williams also allowed the company to proceed in secret by sealing most of the court records. Currently, only about eight of the approximately 86 documents filed in the lawsuit are publicly available. Though the available documents provide clues in the case, such as a reference to an epidemiological report, it’s impossible to piece together what allegedly happened to the child involved.

The judge’s reason for liberally applying a black eraser was simple: Company Doe filed the lawsuit to protect its reputation. Revealing its identity and unsealing court papers could potentially harm the reputation of the company, defeating the point of the legal challenge.

“Were the court to unqualifiedly unseal the case, plaintiff would sacrifice the same right it sought to safeguard by filing suit,” Williams wrote in his heavily redacted opinion. “Although plaintiff could publicly comment on the…[complaint’s] inaccuracy, ordinary consumers would likely dismiss this measure as disingenuous damage control.”

Darren McKinney, a spokesman for the American Tort Reform Association, which represents drug, auto, insurance and other major industries, said he also believes the district court made the right decision.

“It seems perfectly reasonable why this plaintiff would not want its name in the public realm,” he said. “If it believes, and it has convinced a judge, that it has done nothing wrong, whose interest is served by making that name public?”

Public Citizen, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America filed an appeal after learning of the ruling, made public only after months of wrangling between Company Doe and the commission over just how much of the judge’s opinion should be released.

The consumer groups appealed under a rule in Maryland that allows outside parties to contest the sealing of court documents, though they still are prevented from challenging the decision to block posting of the complaint.

The case is now pending in Richmond, Va., before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Protecting the brand

At issue is “a company’s ability to keep our court system secret and anonymous in order to protect their brand,” said Rachel Weintraub, senior counsel for the Consumer Federation of America.

“It’s all about retaining the status quo that existed before where manufacturers completely controlled information about their product.”

Under the database rules, within five days of receiving a report the commission staff must transmit an electronic copy to the manufacturer named in the complaint.

The company then has up to 15 days to respond and to report any inaccuracies. The company may also request that its response be posted, alongside the complaint.

Scott Michelman, a lawyer for Public Citizen.

The commission has a legal obligation to publish the report within 20 business days of receipt.

Because the agency does not investigate every complaint filed, the database, which currently contains close to 13,000 incident reports, carries with it a disclaimer: The agency “does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the contents” of the database.

Still, according to Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the commission, the majority of inaccuracy claims relate to consumers not naming the correct manufacturer for the product, an issue officials are frequently able to resolve.

Some business advocates, siding with the district court judge’s decision, say the database’s disclaimer doesn’t provide enough protection against the potentially devastating impact of an unjustified complaint.

No right to know everything

“The public does not have a right to know everything. Records are sealed for many and various reasons, generally to protect the innocent,” said Fran Smith, a board member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank based in Washington D.C.

In this case, Smith argues, the innocent party is the company.

“If there isn’t a product that caused harm…what is the public interest in trying to destroy a company?” Smith said. “I just don’t see that the consumers’ interests are being, quote, protected.”

But Pamela Gilbert, a lawyer in Washington D.C. who until 2001 was executive director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, says there are unlikely to be dire consequences even if Company Doe’s identity is revealed.

“As far as I know no one has ever gone out of business because there has been a complaint made against them in a government database,” Gilbert said.

A page from the opinion written by Federal District Judge Alexander Williams Jr.

Lila Stephens was 11 months old when she suffered 3rd degree burns to her hands from touching the unprotected glass of a fireplace at a resort in Wisconsin.

To stave off regulation and lawsuits over severe burns to toddlers, manufacturers will provide protective screens as standard equipment with new gas fireplaces.

The industry has revised its voluntary guidelines to call for the addition of mesh screens to be attached to new fireplaces. The aim is to prevent contact with the scorching glass fronts, which get hot enough to melt skin.

Fireplace makers will have a long lead time–until Jan. 1, 2015–to provide screens with new units, though companies are already retooling to do it sooner, said Tom Stroud, a senior manager with the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Assn., an industry group.

As reported by FairWarning, more than 2,000 children ages five and under were injured by contact with the unprotected glass in a recent 10-year period, according to a federal database, with many suffering 2nd and 3rd degree burns. That has triggered at least a dozen lawsuits and scrutiny by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which in June, 2011, sought public comments on the need for federal standards.

Specifications for the screens are included in revisions to the guidelines that will be published in the next few weeks by the American National Standards Institute, which certifies voluntary standards for industry groups. An industry technical committee that previously had rejected the need for a physical barrier developed the new guidelines.

Separately, the hearth and patio association has launched an information campaign to alert current owners of an estimated 11 million gas fireplaces that the glass can get dangerously hot, and that they should buy a screen from a fireplace store if there are children in the home. Many users of gas fireplaces weren’t the original purchasers and never saw any warning statements.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is holding off on regulations in response to the industry moves. Spokesman Scott Wolfson said the agency will use social media to draw attention to the industry’s safety tips. ‘’We share a common goal to prevent young children from suffering terrible burn injuries from touching scorching hot fireplace glass,’’ he said.

However, the industry actions are drawing mixed reviews. Jerome Tapley, a Birmingham, Ala., attorney involved in lawsuits against several fireplace makers, said it was “very troubling’’ that the companies will have more than two years before beginning to provide the screens, and that there are no plans to offer retrofits to current owners.

Dan Dillard, executive director of the nonprofit Burn Prevention Network and chairman of the prevention committee of the American Burn Association, said the safety commission should adopt mandatory standards, rather than rely on voluntary steps by the industry.

And Dillard, who said he believes the federal estimate of about 200 child burn cases per year is unrealistically low, noted that members of the prevention committee plan to prepare a white paper with injury data from leading pediatric burn centers. The aim, he said, will be to “bring a spotlight focus to the severity of this.”

CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum declined an interview request. But Wolfson, the commission spokesman, said deferring to the voluntary standard is partly a matter of the agency’s workload, partly a matter of law.

While saying 2015 seems like a long lead time, Wolfson questioned whether the deadline could be speeded up by a time-consuming federal rulemaking. Moreover, he noted, the commission is precluded by law from regulating when a voluntary standards groups is taking actions similar to those the agency would take.

Warning label currently provided in owners' manuals for gas fireplaces.

Two top fireplace makers already provide safety screens with each new gas fireplace. Hearth & Home Technologies of Lakeville, Minn., for several years has included screens with its glass-enclosed fireplaces. And in 2011, Lennox Hearth Products of Nashville, Tenn., began offering a free attachable screen with each fireplace as part of the settlement of a class action lawsuit.

Under the voluntary standard, the glass is allowed to reach temperatures as high as 500 degrees or 1,328 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the type of glass used. The limits are meant to keep the glass from failing, not people from getting burned. Up to now, most manufacturers have not provided screens or prominent safety warnings out of fear of marring the aesthetic appeal of fireplaces or scaring off customers.

When an official of Miles Industries, a Canadian fireplace maker, was asked in an April deposition why the company had not warned that touching the glass could result in 3rd degree burns, the official said that would be “fear-mongering.‘’ Another Miles executive testified that, with that warning, “As a parent, I don’t know if you’d buy such a fireplace.”

Some have argued that the risks of a fireplace are so obvious that keeping kids safe is simply a matter of good parenting and common sense. However, while everyone understands the risk of an open flame, many fail to recognize the hazard of the unprotected glass, which can remain dangerously hot for at least a half-hour after being turned off.

Some child burn victims were hotel guests whose parents had no experience with gas fireplaces. One such parent was Fred Stephens, whose 11-month old daughter Lila had to have skin grafted from her abdomen to both palms after suffering 3rd degree burns from fireplace glass at a resort in the Wisconsin Dells in 2010.

Stephens, a probation officer who lives in a suburb of St. Paul, Minn., said he was “just devastated” and felt “horribly guilty’’ that he failed, out of ignorance, to protect his child.

Lila, who recently turned three, has some visible scarring but full use of her hands, Stephens said. The family recently settled a lawsuit stemming from the incident.

Stephens said including fixed screens will be a positive step, adding that it’s “very frustrating’’ that it took legal pressure to achieve this. But, Stephens said, “that seems to be the way things work out with any industry in order to force some meaningful change.”