Companies that manufacture high chairs are obligation to protect the children who will use them. Parents expect a safe product, and children deserve nothing less. Developing an effective restraint system is one of the most critical parts of creating a safe product. Parents need to be certain their little one will not climb up and out of the high chair and hurt themselves by falling.
A recent study published in Clinical Pediatrics describes millions of high chairs that have been recalled because of substandard quality. Many parents continue to use these chairs because they simply do not know they have been recalled, inadvertently putting their child at risk of injury. Injury reports from 2003 through 2010 relating to children and high chairs could be a result of the high number of recalls.
High chair defects can be very dangerous, and researchers in the study concluded that an average of 9,400 children are admitted to the emergency room every year because of them.
While this is far less than the 40,000 kids who visit the emergency room as a result of injury in traditional chairs or childrens chairs, kids who go to the hospital after a high chair incident tend to be more seriously hurt. The data reflects a 22% increase in the number of high chair-related incidents from 2003 to 2010.
Our Fort Worth child injury lawyers understand that serious injuries can result from high chair defects. For example, if the restraint system doesn’t work properly the child could fall and sustain a serious head injury. If a child sustains brain damage from the fall, the family will be left to cope with the lifelong repercussions of negligent manufacturing or a flawed design.
The manufacturer could be held legally responsible for such an injury if the parents file a claim, but nothing can return the child to their uninjured state. Parents should always check alerts from the Consumer Product Safety Commission to determine whether their child’s chair has been recalled.