“We never thought that a two-year-old could cause a dresser just 30 inches high to topple over and suffocate him,” Joleen and Craig Dudek said in a joint statement. Ikea has now agreed to pay the California couple $46 million over the death of their son Jozef, the family’s lawyers announced on Monday.
Jozef died in 2017 after a 70-pound Malm dresser tipped onto him. Court documents say it crushed his neck and he suffocated. The Dudeks sued in Philadelphia in 2018, arguing that Ikea knew the dressers posed a tip-over hazard and never told customers they should not be used unless anchored to a wall.
The firm of Feldman Shepherd Wohlgelernter Tanner Weinstock Dodig, which represented the family, believes it is the largest child wrongful death recovery in U.S. history.
What Ikea agreed to
Beyond the payment, Ikea will meet with Parents Against Tip-Overs, an advocacy group that pushes for stabilizing mechanisms on dressers, and widen its outreach to consumers about the recall of its dressers. The Dudeks said they will give $1 million of the money to Kids in Danger, Consumer Reports and the Consumer Federation of America.
In its own statement, Ikea said: “While no settlement can alter the tragic events that brought us here, for the sake of the family and all involved, we’re grateful that this litigation has reached a resolution.” It added that it remains “committed to working proactively and collaboratively to address this very important home safety issue.”
The couple asked anyone who still owns a recalled Ikea dresser to return it. They said they were telling their story “because we do not want this to happen to another family.” Alan Feldman, of the family’s law firm, said the lawyers will keep seeking justice for families hurt by “dangerously unstable dressers.”
A longer record
This is not Ikea’s first such settlement. In December 2016 the company agreed to a combined $50 million deal with the families of three boys, all aged two, who died in tipping accidents in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Washington state. Ikea also donated $150,000 to children’s hospitals as part of that settlement.
The same year, Ikea offered refunds or free anchoring repair kits for all 17.3 million chests, dressers and bureaus it had sold in the U.S. since 1985, the largest recall in its history. Consumer advocates say the Malm line alone has caused 10 deaths in recent years.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission says a child dies about every two weeks in a furniture tipping accident. Its 2018 report counted more than 28,000 tip-over injuries and 542 deaths in U.S. emergency rooms from 2000 to 2017. More than 80 percent of the deaths involved children younger than 14, and 110 were attributed to chests, bureaus or dressers.
Sources
- Ikea to pay $46 million to settle lawsuit over child killed by tipped dresser
- Ikea to pay $46 million to family of boy, 2, killed by dresser
