Articles Posted in Children’s Injuries

If your baby has a VTech rattle or travel mobile, potential defects could result in serious injury. According to WebMD, the company issued a recall due to the risk of choking and “struck-by” injuries.

What Products were Recalled?

Although no injuries have been reported to date, the two products below pose a risk of serious injury or death. If you have either of these products, remove them from your home immediately.

• Shake & Sing Elephant Rattle: At least five consumers have reported that the elephant’s ears have broken off. Being quite small, the ears pose a serious choking risk to young children and babies. As a result, about 280,000 rattles have been recalled. The affected rattles were purchased online and at retail locations, including Amazon and Walmart, between November 2015 and November 2017.
• Lights and Lullabies Travel Mobile: The company indicated that this mobile can be “risky to kids” due to a “plastic arm that clamps to a crib can crack and cause the mobile to fall into the crib.” As a result, an infant can be struck by the mobile, resulting in head injuries or bruising. Between February and November 2017, approximately 37,000 of the affected mobiles were purchased online and at multiple retail locations.

If you have one of these recalled product’s, it is in your best interest to stop using it immediately. A Boston defective products lawyer can help you determine how to proceed if you’ve been injured by a defective or dangerous product.

Child Injuries Related to Products or Objects in the Home

Fortunately, no injuries from the products above have been reported. However, defective and dangerous products injure thousands of children every year. Safe Kids Worldwide has released a report showing the severity of this problem. Some of the statistics from the report are included below.

• The most common cause of serious injury to children in the home is suffocation. In fact, nearly 1,300 children died by suffocation in 2013.
• In 2013, more than 22,000 children went to the emergency room for injuries related to suffocation.
• The vast majority of children who die from suffocation are under age one (80 percent).
• About 26 kids die annually due to furniture tip-overs and other “struck-by” injuries.
• Approximately 188,000 children require emergency medical treatment every year due to injuries caused by children’s toys.
• More than 150 children are fatally injured from choking each year.

Determining Liability

If your child has been injured by a product defect, who is liable? This is a complex question, requiring extensive research and the help of an attorney who specializes in product liability. The distribution chain for a product includes multiple parties; different companies often design the product, manufacture the product and sell the product, and any or all can be liable for a defect. Product defects generally fit into one of three categories – design, manufacturing or marketing. A MA defective products attorney can help you recover damages if you’ve been injured by a defective or dangerous product. Continue reading

Child product manufacturer Fisher-Price recently recalled about 65,000 of its motorized infant soothing motion seats because of their potential to catch fire. According to reports, there have been more than three dozen cases in which the seats have overheated. One device actually caught fire. Fortunately, no injuries have occurred, but the recall serves as a reminder that infants and small children should never be left unattended, even in a child “safety” seat.

Product Liability

If you have been injured by a dangerous or defective product, you may be able to recover damages by bringing a product liability lawsuit against the responsible party or parties. When it comes to determining responsibility, the fault can lie with any party in the product’s distribution chain. Parties can include the product’s designer or manufacturer, the manufacturer of component parts, the product assembler, the wholesaler, or the retail store that initially sold the product.  A Boston product liability attorney can help you determine how to proceed if you’ve been injured by a dangerous or defective product.

Types of Defects

In order to win a product liability case, the plaintiff must be able to show that the injury was caused by a defective product, and that the product was made unreasonably dangerous by the defect. The three types of product defects are:

• Design defects – These defects are present even before the product is manufactured.
• Manufacturing defects – These defects occur during the product’s manufacturing or assembly. The design may have been perfectly safe, but an error in production caused the defect.
• Marketing defects – When improper labeling or lack of safety instructions causes someone to get injured, this may be considered a marketing defect.

As mentioned earlier, the defect must make the product unreasonably dangerous. What does this mean? Well, consider a butcher knife. A butcher knife is dangerous by necessity. In fact, it would be made useless if the blade was too dull to injure someone. Although a knife is a dangerous product, a reasonable person would understand the inherent dangers. The knife would likely come with appropriate safety warnings, but it would be up to the consumer to use the knife responsibly and keep it out of the reach of children, for example. If a child injured himself on a such a knife, it would be difficult to argue that the injury was the fault of the knife’s manufacturer, designer, or retailer.

Possible Defenses

Product liability is a complex and constantly evolving area of the law. You might feel confident that a product defect caused your injury, but the manufacturer might argue that you altered the product once it was no longer under the manufacturer’s control. Another potential defense might be that your misuse of the product caused your injuries, and that the manufacturer couldn’t have anticipated this type of misuse. A MA product liability lawyer can help you recover damages if you’ve been injured by a dangerous or defective product, pharmaceutical, or medical device. Continue reading

Now that school is back in full swing, there are millions of children playing on playgrounds every day. Playgrounds provide kids with an opportunity to have fun, unwind, and engage in creative play. But when playground equipment is not properly maintained, or supervision is poor, injuries can occur.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 200,000 children go to the emergency room annually for playground injuries. Although the vast majority of these injuries are minor, children do suffer serious and life-threatening injuries every year. These include bone fractures, concussions, internal injuries, and amputations. In some cases, playground injuries can be fatal. Between 1999 and 2000, an average of 12 children died from playground-related injuries each year.

Was Negligence a Factor?

Playgrounds can be found at schools, daycare centers, community parks, and on private property. That being said, most playground accidents occur at school or daycare. To determine liability, you must first determine whether negligence played a role in your child’s injuries. A Boston personal injury attorney can help you determine how to proceed if your child has been injured due to another’s negligence.

Factors to Consider

When determining negligence, several factors will be considered. These include:

• Was the equipment properly maintained? If a child is injured on playground equipment that is worn, broken, sharp, or that has rusted, the school or daycare may be liable. It is their job to properly maintain equipment, and replace broken or damaged parts immediately. If the playground is located in a community park, the municipality may be responsible.

• Was there adequate supervision? Schools and daycare centers are responsible for providing adequate – and competent – supervision when children are on a playground. One adult might not be enough; there should be an appropriate child-to-teacher ratio at all times. However, you can’t expect someone to supervise your child outside of school hours, at community playgrounds, or on private property unless a specific arrangement has been made. If you leave your son alone at a community park, for example, and he falls off the climbing wall while you’re gone, you can’t claim another’s negligence.

• Were reasonable safety measures taken to prevent injuries? Playgrounds should be designed and installed to prevent injuries. That’s why you see soft ground surfaces instead of concrete, and equipment with round edges instead of sharp corners. If a playground lacks these safety measures, the school, playground designer or installer, business, or municipality might be on the hook for resulting injuries.

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