QVC Pressure Cooker Explosion Lawsuit Filed Over Disfiguring Burns

According to allegations raised in a recently filed product liability lawsuit, the lid of a “Cook’s Essentials” QVC-brand pressure cooker exploded off suddenly, while the contents were still pressurized, causing an Illinois woman to be scaled with hot liquids and suffer disfiguring burn injuries.

Theresa Ann Salup filed the complaint (PDF) on June 29 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, naming IC Marks, Inc. and QVC, Inc. as defendants.

The QVC pressure cooker explosion occurred on July 2, 2019, when the lid of a Cook’s Essentials programmable pressure cooker launched into the air unexpectedly during normal use by Salup. As a result, Salup was sprayed with the contents and suffered serious and substantial burns.

“Plaintiff and her family used the pressure cooker for its intended purpose of preparing meals and did so in a manner that was reasonable and foreseeable by the Defendants,” the lawsuit states. “However, the aforementioned pressure cooker was defectively and negligently designed and manufactured by Defendants in that it failed to properly function as to prevent the lid from being removed with normal force while the unit remained pressurized, despite the appearance that all the pressure had been released, during the ordinary, foreseeable and proper use of cooking food with the product; placing the Plaintiff, her family, and similar consumers in danger while using the pressure cookers.”

The lawsuit claims safer and economic design changes could have been made that would have prevented the incident, and Salup’s disfiguring injuries.

Pressure Cooker Explosions

The case joins a growing number of similar pressure cooker explosion lawsuits filed in recent months, each raising similar allegations about unreasonably dangerous designs and defective safety features on Instant Pots and other modern pressure cookers, including products sold under the Crock-Pot, Ninja Foodi, Instant Pot, QVC Cook’s Essentials and other popular brand names.

The most common pressure cooker accidents involve burns, which can range from first to third degree and typically cover a large percentage of a person’s body. These types of burn injuries can leave patients prone to infections and sometimes requiring amputations. However, other injuries linked to pressure cookers have included eye injuries, broken bones and other complications that resulted from electrocutions, spills or explosions.

As more of these electric pressure cookers have been introduced in recent years, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued several pressure cooker recalls over problems where lids were able to be opened while contents are under pressure, allowing hot contents to be expelled and causing a scald or burn injury to individuals in the immediate area.

Most recently, a massive Crock-Pot recall was issued in November 2020, impacting nearly 1 million 6-Quart Express Crock Multi-Cookers with lid locking defects, after at least 99 burn injuries were reported.