Fitness equipment maker settles suit with feds

One of the exercise gliders recalled

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A maker of home exercise equipment has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $500,000 for failing to report safety hazards associated with its products, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Thursday.

The penalty resolves a lawsuit filed against Icon Health & Fitness Inc., a Logan, Utah-based company, in U.S. District Court in Maryland last May.

The government charged Icon with failing to report equipment safety hazards. The settlement also requires Icon to establish record-keeping and monitoring systems to track information about product safety hazards.

Under the law, manufacturers, distributors and retailers must report product defects to CPSC without delay.

The CPSC and the Department of Justice accused Icon of failing to report dozens of injuries -- including fractured vertebrae and herniated discs -- caused by a defect in its Weider and Weslo exercise gliders.

Some of the injuries resulted in partial disability, including a compression injury to a woman's spine that left her 50 percent permanently disabled.

By the time the company responded to an inquiry from the CPSC, it knew of at least 86 incidents -- including 68 injuries -- involving the gliders over 18 months, the CPSC said.

Icon recalled the gliders in April 1999 in cooperation with CPSC.

In the same lawsuit, the Department of Justice's Office of Consumer Litigation, working on behalf of CPSC, sued Wal-Mart as a retailer of the gliders. That case is in the discovery phase.

Wal-Mart is accused of selling many of the gliders and failing to report the defect, "despite knowing of many incidents and injuries to consumers," the CPSC said.

At least 29 incidents occurred in Wal-Mart stores while consumers were trying out the gliders, the CPSC said.

"Only if firms who sell unsafe consumer products report quickly to CPSC can we quickly recall them and prevent injuries to consumers," said acting Chairman Thomas Moore.

"This penalty should send a strong message to firms to comply with our reporting requirements."

A spokesman for Wal-Mart said the chain sold 51,000 pieces of the equipment over three years and received only 41 reports of problems.

Such claims are common among users of exercise equipment, said Bill Wertz.

Nearly all of the claimed injuries were minor and there was no pattern to them that suggested a product defect, he said.

"We believe that Wal-Mart had no reasonable basis to conclude that a defect in this exercise equipment posed a risk of serious injury to customers," Wertz said.