Ikea — the world’s largest furniture seller — bills itself as “The Life Improvement Store.” That moniker is impossible to embrace after the Swedish company with U.S. headquarters outside Philadelphia agreed to pay $50 million to settle three cases where boys died after being crushed by Ikea dressers that toppled on them.
The payments might end the legal saga, but the hurt and horror for the families of the three boys — each no more than 2 years old — endures. Nor does the settlement clear the way for Ikea to go back to business as usual.
If anything, the $50 million payout — among the largest-ever settlements of its type — seems to indicate how badly Ikea mismanaged the safety issue.
“These were three very preventable deaths,” said Alan M. Feldman, a Philadelphia attorney who represented the victims’ families.
The deaths might have been prevented had Ikea designed its dressers to pass the industry’s national voluntary safety test, developed to ensure dressers meet a minimum standard for stability.
Instead, Ikea was slow to respond to safety concerns after scores of accidents dating back to 1989. That was the year a 20-month-old Virginia girl died after a four-drawer chest tipped over and fatally pinned her. In February, a 22-month-old Minnesota boy died after a six-drawer chest fell on him.
But it was not until June that Ikea agreed to stop selling dressers that were found to tip over too easily and offer refunds to customers who bought the 29 million dressers sold during the course of more than a decade.
Ikea finally took some action after increased scrutiny that included a series of stories by Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Tricia L. Nadolny. Too bad it took public shaming and legal action to force the company to do the right thing.
Initially, Ikea tried to address the safety concerns by reminding consumers to attach their dressers to the wall and offering free anchoring kits. In court documents, the company argued the parents were negligent for not anchoring the dressers to the wall, as the assembly instructions indicated.
Ikea also resisted for months a Philadelphia judge’s order to turn over to plaintiffs’ attorneys internal documents it gave to federal safety regulators. Weeks after Ikea finally produced the last batch of documents, the company agreed to the $50 million settlement.
Under the settlement, the plaintiffs’ attorneys agreed to return the documents to Ikea, provided the company agreed not to destroy them.
What is Ikea trying to hide?
Philadelphia Media Network, owner of the Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com, filed suit in federal court seeking records from the recall negotiations with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The case is still pending.
This is a serious public safety issue. The lives of defenseless children are at stake.
Not every owner of the dangerous dressers might be aware of the safety threat. That is why more sunshine is needed. The records should be released.
More broadly, a child dies an average of every two weeks in accidents involving toppled furniture or television sets.
Last week, Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Amy Klobucher, D-Minn.; and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., called on the CPSC to investigate a recent dresser tip-over caught on video, and said they plan to reintroduce legislation calling for stronger furniture safety standards.
Corporations should always do the right thing, but too often they don’t.
Now, is the time to act before another child dies needlessly.
— The Philadelphia Inquirer
