A bean bag chair recall has been issued. Multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, are reporting that a corporation that designs and manufactures bean bag chairs for children is recalling those chairs due to the deaths of two children. One child was a 13 year old boy from Texas and the other was a 3 year old girl from Kentucky. These needless deaths are obvious tragedies. According to the New York Times article, there is a voluntary standard that apples to bean bag chairs that calls for non-refillable bean bag chairs to have closed and disabled zippers. Both children were found inside of the bean bags. Both children died of suffocation. The zippers on the chairs in question can be opened. The company that designed and manufactured the chairs is Ace Bayou Corp. and the chairs were made in China, according to news reports.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission was involved in the recall. It’s my guess that the Consumer Products Safety Commission was involved after incidents were reported to it. The Ace Bayou Corporation on its website issued the following safety notice: “Ace Bayou Corporation round and L-shaped beanbags sold before July 2013 may not have a permanent zipper closure. This may allow children to unzip the beanbag cover, crawl inside and suffocate from inhaling the foam pellet filling, posing a suffocation hazard. Any color bean bag may be affected.”
In the law, anytime a person is injured or killed due to a product is called a “products liability case”. A personal injury lawyer who handles products liability cases is called a “products liability lawyer”. There are several case theories involved in products liability cases, including: design defects, manufacturing defects, and warning defects. The laws of negligence, strict liability, and warranty are involved in products liability cases.
The product defect injury lawyer Thomas Creech Law Offices is located in Greenville SC and handles products liability cases throughout South Carolina. If you or your family member have been injured or killed by a defective product, feel free to call our offices to set up a free, friendly, and personal case consultation in your potential case. Feel free to call 864-235-499 and let’s talk solutions to your legal problems.
BEAN BAG CHAIR RECALL UPDATE: I just read on the web site of the Consumer Products Safety Commission that in March of 1995, the CPSC and multiple bean bag companies, including Ace Bayou, agreed to a major cooperative repair program involving bean bag zippers. According to the CPSC web site post, at that time in 1995, “CPSC is aware of 5 deaths and at least 27 other incidents in which children and toddlers have inhaled or ingested the bean bag filling. In some cases, the children unzipped the bean bag cover, crawled inside, and suffocated from inhaling the small pellets of foam filling. Read more at the cpsc.gov website.