Welcome to the November edition of the Alston & Bird CPSC Recall Snapshot.

Last month, the CPSC announced a $3.8 million civil penalty against Best Buy for selling recalled products. The CPSC’s press release alleges that Best Buy “failed to implement adequate procedures to accurately identify, quarantine, and prevent the sales of the recalled products across all of its supply channels.” About 600 recalled items, including 400 recalled cameras, were sold to consumers over a five-year period. According to the settlement agreement, these post-recall sales resulted in one reported injury – a skin irritation from a recalled camera. Given the millions of products sold by Best Buy during this period, the complex supply chain logistics related to selling millions of products across various channels, and the absence of any significant injuries caused by the sale of the recalled products, it is rather onerous to impose a multimillion-dollar civil penalty for an inadvertent glitch that allowed only 600 products among millions sold to slip through the system.