Put complaints online

0 Comments | USA TODAY, March, 2008

In 2003, the government's product safety watchdog got its first hint that something might be wrong with a popular crib: A Mississippi woman reported that the crib's drop-rail had suddenly fallen, an obvious hazard. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) investigated, but the inquiry went nowhere.

Seven months later, came another warning. A Georgia mother complained that the drop-rail on her baby's crib had come loose. She worried about the safety of other infants, a concern that proved prescient.

On April 12, 2005, 9-month-old Liam Johns slipped through a gap in his crib after one end of the drop-rail came off its track. He got stuck between the rail and the mattress and died. This time, the report to the CPSC came from the Sacramento County coroner's...