I'm all for throwing the book at people who knowingly market things that appear to be safe in a particular sense but are not.
Buckyballs are obviously strong magnets that are small enough to swallow. Seeing the product or hearing a two sentence description is enough information for a parent to understand that it is not suitable for children who still regularly place toys and random objects in their mouths. Young children should also not be allowed to play with knives, household/automotive chemicals, cooking appliances and sources of electricity.
Yeah, it's so obvious that Buckyballs are dangerous compared to other small items that can be swallowed, that there are people in every HN or Slashdot discussion who fail to grasp it, including this one:
"A quick search of: kid swallow lego Returns about 1.9 million results on google, I'm guessing more kids swallow legos, where is the recall order there?"
"Unless you have a gastric bypass they should be attracted to each-other in the stomach, before going anywhere where you can squeeze stuff, well assuming they where eaten during the same time."
Edit - same in the Wall Street Journal comments section:
"Anyway, what's wrong with kids eating magnets? Wouldn't they be the same as eating BB's or ball bearings? If we banned everything that kids eat, we'd have to ban dirt because kids eat a lot of that too. "
"So any toy or object smaller than a human mouth must be banned because it might be ingested by a child? How about Legos? How about marbles? Do we get rid of coins?"
I will accept that the hazards may have been insufficiently obvious prior to the warning label that states exactly what might happen to a person who eats Buckyballs. I believe the warning labels on the packaging are sufficient to entirely shift responsibility for safe use of the product to the purchaser.
The general principle I'm advocating here is that product manufacturers should not be liable for injuries when the potential hazards are either self-evident to a reasonable adult[0] or clearly marked on the packaging. This might get a bit murky when a product is marketed to young children, but as far as I can tell, Buckyballs were definitely not marketed to age groups who were likely to eat them.
Buckyballs are obviously strong magnets that are small enough to swallow. Seeing the product or hearing a two sentence description is enough information for a parent to understand that it is not suitable for children who still regularly place toys and random objects in their mouths. Young children should also not be allowed to play with knives, household/automotive chemicals, cooking appliances and sources of electricity.