Plantation Personal Injury Lawyer on the CPSC phil&teds Feeding Chair Warning

Last week, The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a warning about the use phil&teds feeding chairs for children. The reason for the warning is that the CPSC believes the metoo clip-on table told children’s chairs can lead to a falling hazard for the children. The CPSC has alleged that the clamps can detach from the table surface, leading to a fall. As a Plantation Products Liability Lawyer, I am very concerned about this warning from the CPSC, since it seems like children are potentially at risk for very serious injuries. Moreover, the CPSC said that the phil&teds “has refused to agree to a national recall of their hazardous product that is acceptable to CPSC.”

For anyone who purchased this product for their child, the CPSC phil&teds Danger Alert Release can be found here. According to the alert, if a child moves its legs or pushes on the table, then the feeding chair can detach and cause the child to fall to the floor. From a Plantation Personal Injury Lawyer’s perspective, an alleged design flaw such as this should have been corrected in the development phase, long before the product was ever brought to market. It seems reasonable to assume that a child would move his/her legs while in a chair, and if such a movement causes the child to fall to the ground, then the product seems fundamentally unsafe.

Another problem that prompted this warning from the CPSC is the issue of spacing between the metal bar and the clamps of the chair, which can causes a child’s fingers to be “severely pinched, lacerated, crushed or amputated if caught between the bar and the clamp when the chair detaches.” Obviously, that is a horrifying scenario, which is why the CPSC is working to avoid any further injuries. The CPSC writes in its warning of “numerous incidents” concerning this product. As a Plantation Personal Injury Attorney, one of my biggest concerns with this ordeal is that phil&teds hasn’t yet issued a voluntary recall of the defective products. In the simplest business terms possible, beyond any legal duty that it owes to its consumers, it simply doesn’t look good for the company from a public relations standpoint for everyone to know that they have been uncooperative in working with the CPSC to implement a recall.

The company has issued a statement on its website about the CPSC metoo warning. As one might expect, the company tells a somewhat different story than what the CPSC is alleging, so it will be very interesting to see how this issue proceeds and to what result. From my perspective, as a Plantation Products Liability Attorney who has seen people suffer unfortunate injuries time and again, the larger issue here remains the safety of the children who are put in the phil&teds clip-on table top chairs. The children are completely unaware of any present danger and would not know how to react to an unexpected fall. The last thing that anyone wants to see as a result of this product defect is children suffering head injuries that might affect their development and/or future health.