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Children love to play and climb and will find creative ways to do so, without thinking about or knowing the dangers of their actions. There is a recent video gone viral of twin brothers who were having fun climbing on their dresser before it tipped over, trapping one of them underneath. Thankfully, both were okay, but it could have been much worse. Click here to watch the full video and get a better understanding of just how quickly furniture can fall and injure or crush a child.
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission one child dies every 2 weeks due to furniture tip-overs or falling objects, like TVs or appliances. In addition, a child is injured every 3 hours, which works out to be 71 children per day, 2,117 per month and 25,400 per year.
Injuries From Furniture Tip-Overs or Falling Objects
Injuries range from minor to serious. They usually occur from TVs, dressers or appliances that tip over on a child causing the child to:
- Become trapped under the object and unable to breathe
- Suffer contusions (bruises) or abrasions (cuts)
- Be crushed by the weight of the object
- Suffer from injuries to internal organs
- Have Broken bones
- Suffer head injury
Defective Products
Initially, parents might blame themselves because of their child’s injury. Maybe they didn’t secure the object well enough or felt they weren’t watching the child closely enough. But this may not be the case. Sometimes, furniture falls are due to a design or manufacturing defect that makes the object inherently dangerous, or it might be due to a company’s failure to warn about the dangers of a product.
Last year, a personal injury law firm settled a wrongful death lawsuit with IKEA on behalf of 3 families whose children died from falling furniture sold by their company. IKEA reached the multi-million dollar settlement after it was alleged that their design did not meet the voluntary national safety standard for the stability of chests and dressers.
Safety Tips to Prevent Injury from Falling Furniture
We can’t watch our children every second of the day. Therefore, we do our best to anticipate how they can injure themselves and how we can protect them from those injuries. The best ways to prevent injury or death from falling objects or furniture is to:
- Secure furniture with anti-tip brackets, or furniture anchors. These are inexpensive and can be found in most stores, as well as online.
- Mount flat screen TVs on the wall. If it’s not a flat screen have the TV on low, stable furniture designed to hold TVs.
- Keep tempting objects, such as toys or candy, off of furniture. The idea is to not give children a reason to want to reach or climb for the object.
Our personal injury law firm in Macon, Georgia has successfully handled multiple product defect cases. If you’ve been injured by a product and think you might have a claim call us toll free at 888-876-6935 or complete our contact form. Our consultations are free and you pay nothing for your case until we win.