Complain about a product or service

Joe Boxer

Phyllis of Ridgecrest CA writes (9/5/02):
My 8-year-old daughter bought a pair of Joe Boxer magnetic earrings from Kmart that were intended to simulate the real body piercing. The packaging had no age-appropriate warnings or possible dangers when placing the earrings on the body.

When she put each half of the earrings at the outside of her nose as if it were a piercing on the lower middle cartilege the magnets violently shot up into the sinuses. Best described as if the magnets tried to push away from one another and then flipped correctly causing them to now be held together up inside her nose.

The magnetic earrings, having a strong force, held together on each side of her upper sinuses. Unable to remove them myself she required a physician. Our family doctor couldn't remove them due to the location that they were in. We were sent to the emergency room to have them removed by the E.R. doctor.

Unfortunately, he couldn't reach them and sent us to a pediatrician that ultimately returned us to the emergency room to have the child sedated by intravenous medication in order to extract the magnets.

This was a very tramatic experience for my daughter and myself. The total time spent between the 4 doctors and the emergency room was 10 hours. This included the time it took my child to recover from the heavily sedated state she was put in. We have yet to receive the billing from this accident, which will be a hardship considering our insurance company will only pay 80%. The earrings themselves cost only $4.99 and should have had a safety warning for parents.

Phyllis should retain a personal injury attorney immediately. An aggressive attorney should be able to recover the costs of treating her daughter's injury.

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