Burn injury attorneys at Pintas & Mullins Law Firm warn consumers that ‘Cuddle Care’ Dolls, sold in Wal-Marts throughout the U.S. were recently recalled. The My Sweet Love/My Sweet Baby Cuddle Care Baby Dolls can overheat, creating serious burn hazards. To date there have been at least twelve reports of child injury.
The defective dolls are battery-powered, and come with a medical kit including a stethoscope, syringe, and thermometer. The dolls get ‘sick’ on cue, coughing and becoming flushed, so children can take care of them.
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the circuit board inside the dolls, which cause them to cough and babble, can overheat. If this occurs while a child is playing with it, the child is likely to be burned wherever he or she is in contact with the doll. In many of the burn incidents reported to Wal-Mart, burns and blisters occurred on the hands. Consumers who purchased these dolls may return them to Wal-Mart for a full refund.
Another children’s product, bed canopies sold at IKEA, were also recently recalled. These bed canopies have pointed tops with mesh fabric, and may pose a strangulation risk to infants and small children. CPSC asserts that the canopies can become easily entangled, enabling children to wrap the mesh canopy around their neck.
For a free legal consultation, call 800-934-6555
The recalled products are hung from the ceiling, measure about seven feet long, and splay over a child’s crib of bed. There have been nearly a dozen reports of children getting entangled in the canopy, including several involving potential strangulation. Like the My Sweet Dolls, consumers who purchased the recalled canopies can return them to any IKEA store for a full refund.
Recalls Unlikely to Prevent Injury and Death
We recently wrote that most recalled child’s products remain in homes even after the recall is announced. This is largely due to inadequate and ineffective collaboration between companies that manufacture recalled products, retailers like Wal-Mart that sell them, and the federal government which oversees product recalls.
Click to contact our lawyers today
In that article we outlined the troubling data surrounding this issue: of the 11 units of children’s products recalled last year, only 10% were ever fixed or returned to the store. That means that 90% of the dangerous, defective children’s products remained in American homes, posing serious hazards to families.
Complete a Free Case Evaluation form now
Advocacy groups – specifically, Kids in Danger, which released the cited report – are now pushing manufacturers and retailers to take to social media and other outlets to increase awareness of child product recalls. They recommend that families are often online anyway, so posting recalls and defective children’s products on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook may be an important step in solving this issue.
In its part to heighten awareness, the CPSC recently launched a Poison Prevention Information Center. On its website, federal officials assert that unintentional poisonings kill about 30 children every year in the U.S., and highlight a few ways to keep your child out of danger. Among their recommendations include:
- Always using and re-sealing child safety caps
- Keep the poison control hotline (1.800.222.1222) nearby
- Lock all poisons and medicines and keep them away from a child’s sight and reach
The agency specifically mentions a few products that have been poisoning children in large numbers recently. These include laundry detergent single-load packets, button batteries, and carbon monoxide risks. Tide and other laundry detergent manufacturers are currently facing poisoning lawsuits after children came in contact with the single-load packets. Parents are claiming that the containers had inadequate warnings and did not have any child-proof packaging to prevent accidental exposure.
Button batteries are coin-sized batteries used in many small electronic devices, which also cause thousands of pediatric poisoning incidents per year. If ingested, batteries can cause life-threatening chemical burns in the throat.
Toxic chemical exposure lawyers at Pintas & Mullins Law Firm have been working with families of injured children for nearly three decades. We understand how sensitive these cases are, particularly when injuries are caused by defective, dangerous, or recalled children’s products. Let us help you gain compensation for your child’s suffering – contact our firm today for a free, no-obligation legal consultation.
Call or text 800-934-6555 or complete a Free Case Evaluation form
