Sears to fix tippy ranges

Sears, the nation's largest appliance retailer, has agreed to address a dangerous home hazard under a proposed settlement of a recent class-action lawsuit.

We first wrote about the hazard—stove tip-overs and cooking fires—last year. The problem: Over the past seven years when millions of Americans had freestanding gas or electric ranges installed in their homes, Sears representatives failed to secure the ranges with a bracket to keep the stoves from tipping over. This can happen when weight is applied to an open oven door.  Since 1991, brackets have been included with ranges that comply with the Underwriters Laboratories' safety standard for ranges.  But an internal memo from Sears said that the safety brackets were installed in only an estimated five percent of the ranges sold.  Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, says unsecured stoves have accounted for at least 33 deaths and 84 injuries since 1980.

Now, Sears is proposing to correct that problem—at least for its customers who paid for delivery and installation of freestanding or slide-in ranges between July 2, 2000 and  September 18, 2007.  According to the proposed settlement, Sears will offer free installation of antitip devices to eligible customers who do not have such a device already installed or pay up to $100 in reimbursement to those eligible customers who paid for (but never got) installation of an antitip device after Sears delivered the range. Alternatively, Sears will give consumers a $50 gift card good towards purchase of a new Sears range.

If all 4 million eligible consumers participate in this program, the corrective action could cost Sears $546 million, one economist estimates, plus up to $17 million in attorney fees.

We are pretty certain that the problem is not unique to ranges sold at Sears. The retailer's ranges are made by other manufacturers that also sell their own branded products. Those companies were not named in Public Citizen's lawsuit. Public Citizen said it will petition the Consumer Product Safety Commission to recall the millions of other stoves installed by other retailers—and ask for a stronger safety standard to prevent tip-overs as well as a  public alert.

For more information on the settlement, consumers can consult the settlement Web site.