Bella Pressure Cooker Facts
Modern electric pressure cookers are marketed as a vastly easier, safer alternative to their stovetop predecessors.
In recent years, Bella has sold both, offering a traditional stovetop variety as well as electric pressure cookers, also commonly called multicookers. Though their operation differed widely, each product came with similar promises of safety from Bella. The lids were said to lock in place while in use, shielding home chefs from the pressurized and super-heated contents inside, and could not be opened until the pressure had been released.
However, users of both Bella’s stovetop pressure cookers and its electric options have suffered serious injuries due to defective locking mechanisms. The existence of malfunctioning Bella Pressure Cookers has also been recreated by engineering experts hired by Johnson//Becker in one of our client’s cases.
The alarming video below shows the lid to a Bella Pressure Cooker being removed with very little force, despite the fact the contents were still under pressure.
Bella Pressure Cooker Safety Claims
Online, Bella has claimed that its stovetop pressure cooker came with an “extremely safe and secure locking system,” including a “safety valve” that cinches the lid into place while its contents are under pressure. In the owner’s manual, Bella tells customers, flatly: “When cooking under pressure, the pressure cooker cannot be opened once pressure is reached.”
On the electric side, Bella markets multicookers with a “safety locking lid,” one which “unlocks only once pressure is released.” An owner’s manual adds: “For your safety the lid will not come off when it is in the LOCK position.”
These claims are no comfort to people who’ve been burned in a Bella Pressure Cooker explosion.
However, dozens of Johnson//Becker clients injured in similar accidents say Bella’s lids can be opened while still under pressure, spewing contents well above the boiling point onto users and their family members.
Bella Pressure Cooker Litigation Guide
Interested in downloading our Pressure Cooker Litigation Guide? Learn more about the pressure cooker litigation team at Johnson//Becker and Meet the Attorney and Co-Chair of our Consumer Products and Mass Tort Department.
To contact us for a Free Case Evaluation, please visit our contact form or dial (800) 279-6386.
Bella Pressure Cooker Explosion Video
In the short video below, watch as an engineer tests a Bella Pressure Cooker for performance under normal use and circumstances. Though the cooking unit is still under pressure, a modest attempt to open the lid causes it to yield almost immediately. In the next instant, the pot’s contents erupt out, with steam and above-boiling water splashing onto engineer’s protected hands, wrist, and in every direction.
It takes only the slightest imagination to consider how horrific the same scenario would be for an unsuspecting home chef.
Bella Pressure Cooker Explosion Lawsuits
In a recent lawsuit against Sensio, manufacturer of Bella Pressure Cooker products, a Johnson//Becker client alleges Sensio sold a product “that suffers from serious and dangerous defects” which put customers and their family members at risk.
Both the stovetop and electric Bella Pressure Cookers can open with their contents under pressure, something the manufacturer “knew or should have known,” one lawsuit says. Because it was unwilling to address and prevent these defects, Johnson//Becker and its client “put profit ahead of safety.”
One lawsuit continues, saying Bella Pressure Cooker’s manufacturer “ignored and/or concealed their knowledge of these defects in its pressure cookers from… the public in general, in order to continue generating a profit from the sale of said pressure cookers, demonstrating a callous, reckless, willful, depraved indifference to the health, safety and welfare” of its customers.
Bella’s bottom line should not come at the expense of injured customers. Our law firm has represented dozens of Bella customers seeking compensation for their injuries including medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, scarring and other negative impacts related to the incident caused by their exploding Bella pressure cooker.
Bella Pressure Cooker Burn Injuries
Johnson//Becker is aware of dozens of injuries caused by malfunctioning Bella Pressure Cooker devices.
Incidents caused by defective Bella devices have resulted in trips to the emergency room, doctor’s offices and a long road to recovery. Victims of faulty Bella Pressure Cookers have endured extreme pain, both in the moment of explosion and long after the incident, and have lost time at work, socializing, and with their families.
Potential damages that can be caused by an exploding pressure cooker include:
- First-, Second-, and Third-Degree Burns
- Doctor Visits and/or Hospitalization
- Infection
- Skin Grafts
- Lost Time from Work
- Permanent Scarring and/or Disfigurement
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Damage inflicted by Bella Pressure Cookers is not just superficial or financial. One woman lost her appetite due to the smell of bandages covering wounds on her chest. One family had to care for their baby’s burn injuries while already raising two other toddlers. A teenage boy was bullied and humiliated about burn wounds to his face and neck.
She Wanted a Bella Pressure Cooker. Soon, she Needed a New Tattoo.
K.G. is used to reaching into a hot oven.
K.G. spent most of a decade working in catering with a bakery, and estimates she made at least one birthday or wedding cake per week on the side. Now a house parent for a foster facility for girls in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, K.G. is still comfortable operating a busy kitchen. Her three kids and grandchildren regularly come over for Sunday night dinners, where K.G. cooks for 10 or more guests.
In fall 2018, K.G. tried taking advantage of a shortcut in the kitchen. Her sister-in-law, who had boasted of how her Bella pressure cooker saved hours on the cook time of roasted meats, gave K.G. one of her own as a present.
“She said it was quick and easy,” K.G. says.
And K.G. agreed, at first, making a singlebatch of beef short ribs that came together nicely. She tried the Bella cooker again about a week later, and her results were popular enough that guests requested seconds.
While the Bella cooked away, K.G. began heating up a pot of tea on the stove for tea. She was reaching to grab the hot water when she made contact with the pressure cooker next to it.
“It was a soft touch,” she says. “Suddenly the top came off, like, into the air, and the meat did, too.”
K.G.’s then-husband and their dining company ran to find her recovering from the scary incident. At first, she downplayed her injuries, saying she was mostly “blown away by the noise” of the explosion. When she went to remove her shirt, K.G. saw cause for concern.
“I have dark skin, so if red shows up on me, I’m burnt,” she says. “My skin turned a burgundy red color almost instantly.”
K.G. was in intense pain all through the night, and her skin soon swelled and bubbled. She was still in agony when she went to a burn center the next morning.
“If the pain could be something over 10 [out of 10], it was over 10,” she says. “Putting on a seatbelt, clothes, a bra, everything hurt.”
The injury required multiple trips for medical treatment and frequent cleaning and rewrapping of the sensitive area. K.G.’s burns to her torso were significant enough to obscure a tattoo she’d had drawn in honor of her mother, who loved ladybugs. Later, she would get another tattoo, this one of roses and leaves, to color over the scars left by her severe burn injury.
K.G. says she was interested in retaining Johnson//Becker for legal representation within a week of her injury, which she blamed entirely on the poor design and construction of her Bella pressure cooker.
“I thought, this thing is defective,” she says. “It should take a hell of a blow to get that top off. If that lid came off from under this lock, there had to be something wrong.”
The lawsuit she filed through Johnson//Becker cites Bella’s claims of an “extremely safe and secure locking system,” one meant to prevent exactly the catastrophe that happened in her kitchen. The Complaint she filed against manufacturer Sensio, Inc. alleges the company was “negligent in the designing, manufacturing, advertising, marketing, distributing and selling” of her Bella pressure cooker.
These days, K.G. doesn’t want any risk or loud noises in the kitchen. For the most part, she’s back to cooking in the oven. Even if it’s slower and less convenient, it feels safer.
“I could maybe break my wrist taking something out [of the oven],” she says, laughing. “But I’m done with [pressure cookers], I don’t even want one anymore. I think that could happen again. It’s really a lot of pressure, and it’s dangerous.”
Bella Pressure Cooker Lawsuits Filed by Johnson//Becker
Though each Bella Pressure Cooker case has its own facts and details, our law firm has repeatedly found what we are alleging are the same flaws in design and manufacturing leading to customer injuries.
Below is a list of just some of the more recent lawsuits our lawyers have filed against Sensio, Bella’s manufacturer. Please feel free to review the complaints to learn more.
- A New Jersey woman injured by her Bella Pressure Cooker in June 2020.
- A February 2022 lawsuit on behalf of a California woman.
- The January 2020 burn injuries suffered by a minor who lives in Colorado.
- A March 2022 lawsuit Johnson//Becker filed on behalf of a Wisconsin client.
- An Alabama woman whose Bella Pressure Cooker exploded in November 2018.
- A June 2021 lawsuit on behalf of an Arkansas woman injured nearly three years earlier.
Will my Bella Pressure Cooker Lawsuit be Handled Individually or as Part of a Class Action Lawsuit?
Johnson//Becker will handle and file your case individually, giving your case the individual care and attention you deserve. Our lawyers feel strongly that it is not in our clients’ best interest to file or join a class action lawsuit for two reasons. First, class actions are designed to address damages that are usually economic in nature, not personal injuries, the severity and effect of which will vary from person to person. In other words, what is a fair resolution in one case may not be a fair resolution in another case. In addition, in a class action, the control and decision-making process is consolidated with one “Class Representative”, who oversees making decisions for everyone in the class. If that Class Representative is not you, someone you have never met and who has no incentive to put your best interests first will get to make the decisions that will affect your case.
Finally, we feel strongly that it is in our client’s best interest to file an individual lawsuit, as class action lawsuits in product liability personal injury cases typically result in far lower settlements. At Johnson//Becker, PLLC our goal is to maximize compensation for our clients, and for this reason we only file individual lawsuits.
Questions about a Bella Pressure Cooker Lawsuit? Contact a Johnson//Becker Lawyers for a Free Case Review.
If you or a loved one has been injured by a defective Bella Pressure Cooker, you may want to speak with the lawyers at Johnson//Becker. We are actively filing new Bella Pressure Cooker lawsuits across the country, and you may be entitled to financial compensation for your injuries.
We offer a Free Case Evaluation. Please contact us using the form below or by calling us at (800) 279-6386.
We would be honored to speak with you and respond promptly to every inquiry we receive.
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