For the last 5 years AT LEAST, Milnor has been putting out notices, advertisements, all kinds of communications to laundry owners notifying them of this problem with the older machines. I have been notified I don't know how many times since buying my laundry in 1999 and I don't have any Milnor equipment! They run ads serveral times a year in the trade journals, and the journals also run news stories on them. They have been doing this for soooooooo long, I don't think they are liable. It's the lazy ass, slum lord laundry owners who should pay, since they ignore the notices and don't upgrade the door lock/safety switch on their machines, which as I understand is a fairly easy thing to do. Crap like this causes all laundries to pay the penalty with steeper insurance premiums or being dropped altogether.
The problem with the circuit breakers is a double edge sword. If they are out and exposed, some wiseass invariable will mess with them. So, in most cases, they are hidden but accessible. Mine are in the top of the bulkheads between the washers. If you are not a laundry owner and an emergency situation arises, you wouldn't think to look there.
Dexter has only now introduced an emergency stop button on their washers. While softmount commercial washers are rare in a coin-op setting, they usually have a stop button also (because they are really OPL machines with a coin drop). No other manufacturer has them, altho' they are all talking about adding them. The problem with having a stop button is also a double edge sword. People will use it because they need to add a sock! Then when they reshut the door, they have to repay to start the machine. It does not pick up where it left off. Oy!
