Children’s Furniture Manufacturer Recalls Over 18,000 pieces of furniture

A children’s furniture manufacturer has recently issued a voluntary recall for its children’s dressers and wardrobes. The manufacturer has issued the recall due to a defectively-manufactured component designed to secure the furniture items to the wall. Pali Design has now received a report from a customer that the component has broken and allowed an armoire to tip over, though no children were near it at the time. There are eight separate furniture collections affected by this recall, manufactured between January 2006 and September 2010. Furniture manufactured since October of 2010 came with a redesigned wall restraint kit. The recalled furniture was sold in various independent specialty stores, online, and in Babies R Us stores. Customers can check the list of affected serial numbers here to determine if their furniture is included in this recall.

Once manufacturers of an item become aware of and verify a potential risk of injury from an item that they manufacture, they bear a legal responsibility to notify customers as soon as possible of the potential risk. Tip-overs in particular account for a large number of deaths, often ones where parents feel too guilty to file a lawsuit against what may be a defectively-manufactured product, since many child deaths due to tip-overs occur when parents are momentarily out of the room where their children are playing. The Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that one child dies every two weeks when a piece of furniture tips over onto them, either while they were playing on or near the furniture, or simply due to the poor design of the furniture, making it unstable and causing it to be prone to tipping. Between 2011 and 2013, 430 children were killed when furniture tipped over onto them. While 70% of such deaths were caused by either televisions alone or televisions along with furniture on which they were seated, over a quarter are due to the tipping over of furniture, dressers, or tables. Injuries not resulting in deaths from tip-overs are estimated at 25,400 per year in the US.

Often, anchoring furniture to a wall can prevent such injuries. However, in the recall at hand, the anchoring hardware offered by the manufacturer was deemed insufficient to prevent all tip-over-related risks. If you or your child has been seriously injured by a falling piece of furniture, seek legal help to investigate a possible product liability claim against the manufacturer. Contact the skilled Mobile personal injury and product liability attorneys at the Law Office of J. Allan Brown for a free consultation on your claim. From Mobile, Alabama, or anywhere in the area, including Satsuma, Montrose, Irvington, Fairhope, or Baldwin County, call 251-473-6691.