Special Coverage

Exploding Glass Patio Tables

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― Imagine sitting at a patio table on a warm night, enjoying time with family and friends, when all of the sudden, the glass top of your table shatters into thousands of pieces.

It's happened to people all over our area. People say it happens without warning, and despite hundreds of similar cases, no recall has been issued.

Some call these "exploding tables" -- glass tops that shatter without warning.

It happened to Karie Steinmetz of Aston during a party.

"My neighbor's coming over, so I'm putting some stuff in a bowl for him to eat and then it just shattered," said Steinmetz. "The table and all the contents of it were on the ground in the middle of the table, and it sounded like a BB gun shot the glass out of it."

The stories are similar all over our area.

Barbara Kuzan found her glass coffee table shattered, "the table all over the floor in pieces."

It happened to Lisa Tassi's patio table in Audubon, New Jersey.

"It was broken when we came home," said Lisa Tassi. "We didn't hear it, our neighbors didn't hear it."

It happened to Kathy Tassi, her sister-in-law.

"The whole table had just crashed to the ground," said Kathy Tassi. "All you saw was a shell, and it was just in tiny, tiny, tiny little pieces all over."

Kathy and Lisa both got replacement tables, same brands as their original tables. But they only have this one left, because Kathy's replacement shattered again.

"If it would have been just her, then maybe it was an accident or a freak of nature," said Lisa Tassi. "But for it to happen two times to her and once to me? It's definitely the quality."

All the tables were sold under the Martha Stewart brand at Kmart and Sears. There are other reports involving Hampton Bay tables from Home Depot.

They all have one thing in common: The manufacturer, JRA Furniture.

"This is not an isolated problem," said Joe Enoch of ConsumerAffairs.com, a consumer website that has more than a 1,000 complaints about exploding glass tables.

"If we're getting a thousand complaints, and we're a pretty small publication and we have this database, I think it's pretty indicative that this is a larger problem," said Enoch.

Why did this happen to all these people? No one is sure. Customers say the tables just shattered spontaneously.

"This was just instantaneous -- millions and millions of pieces of glass on the ground," said Steinmetz. "That's what was just so strange about it."

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has not issued a recall.

Sears Holdings Company, which owns Sears and Kmart, told CBS 3, "We take consumer product safety very seriously and we believe that these tables are safe."

JRA Furniture filed bankruptcy last June and is now out of business. The company is also named as a defendant in a class action lawsuit involving the Martha Stewart brand of tables.

"It's a shame, but anything with Martha Stewart's name, I don't buy," said Kathy Tassi.

ConsumerAffairs.com says the vast majority of complaints involved the Martha Stewart tables.

We asked Sears Holdings Company if any of the tables are still in Sears and Kmart stores. Sears said, "No comment."

Home Depot said it has only received a handful of complaints, and hasn't used that manufacturer since last July.

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