Travelers, defending the pressure cooker manufacturer after the lid blew off mid-release and put my wife in an Ohio ER with second degree burns on her forearm and neck, offered us a $4,500 "customer goodwill payment" against $15,100 in documented medical bills, kitchen repairs, and lost wages, conditioned on shipping them the cooker "for quality review" and signing a full release within 14 days, then went silent for six weeks when we declined to hand over the only piece of evidence in the case. Forced a $31,000 settlement using the product injury recovery framework: evidence preservation and the spoliation letter, the CPSC report, the medical specials file, a demand package their committee could not discount, and a small claims filing that finally moved the file to a human. the complete 5-month playbook.
five months ago my wife was venting a pot of sunday chili the same way she had done a hundred times, following the manual, natural release finished, float valve down, and when she turned the lid the...