Second Lawsuit Filed in Death of a Child Trapped under Ikea Dresser

In the second such lawsuit in less than a year, Washington state parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Swedish furniture retailer Ikea. Their toddler son died after being pinned under a toppled Ikea dresser.

The suit, filed in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, claims Ikea sold the dresser despite knowing it was unstable, Philly.com reports. This is the second lawsuit over a fatal tip over of an Ikea Malm dresser. A similar suit was filed by the mother of a Pennsylvania two-year-old, who died in February 2014 when a dresser fell over on him.

In July 2015, Ikea and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) jointly announced a “repair program” involving 27 million Ikea dressers. The company said the dressers could be unstable if not secured to the wall, and offered purchasers a restraint kit so they could anchor the dresser to the wall.

Under CPSC regulations, a repair program of this type is considered a recall, though Ikea has avoided using the word recall in its communications. The company stresses that it has not offered to buy back or replace the units, Philly.com reports.

According to the lawsuit, the Washington state boy was pinned under a three-drawer Malm dresser on June 11, 2014. The child’s father found him and lifted the dresser off the boy. The mother performed CPR until the ambulance arrived, according to Philly.com. The boy was hospitalized on a ventilator for four days before his parents removed him from life support,

The parents seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, including compensation medical expenses, funeral expenses, the child’s pain and suffering, and the family’s emotional distress.

The lawsuit accuses Ikea of designing and selling dressers that do not meet the furniture industry’s safety standard for stability. A lawyer representing the families of both children who died said Malm dressers are inherently unstable and Ikea has placed the burden for making them safe on consumers. The company has “got it backwards,” he said.

Ikea, the Swedish giant furniture retailer with U.S. headquarters in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, would not comment on the latest lawsuit, citing a policy against discussing ongoing litigation. But the company said in a statement, “We continue to work cooperatively with the CPSC on the important issue of tip-over safety,” according to Philly.com.

The CPSC says furniture tip-overs are responsible for more than 38,000 emergency-room visits in the United States annually. A child dies every two weeks in a tip-over accident, the agency says, and tip-over incidents most often involve unsecured dressers and televisions. Two thirds of the injuries happen to children under five.

 

from Parker Waichman http://www.yourlawyer.com/blog/second-lawsuit-filed-in-death-of-a-child-trapped-under-ikea-dresser/