An eighth child has been killed by an unstable Ikea dresser that fell on top of the boy when he was alone in his bedroom.
Two-year-old Jozef Dudek, of California, was killed when a three-drawer Ikea dresser — that was part of a recall last year — fell over and crushed the boy during naptime.
The family’s lawyer, Alan M. Feldman, said the accident occurred in May and the boy was unsupervised at the time.
“When the father entered the room of the child who had been put down for a nap, he found him underneath the dresser,” he said.
Ikea recalled the three-drawer Malm and other models of chests and dressers in June 2016, citing a serious tip-over hazard, and urged customers who’d purchased the dressers to either anchor them to a wall, or return them for a refund.
But Feldman insisted the recall was ineffective.
“Unfortunately, there are 29 million of these things that were sold, and the recall was ineffective in alerting consumers about the problem about the defective condition of the dresser,” Feldman said.
He also said consumer products should be stable on their own and not require additional anchoring for them to be considered safe.
“The vast majority of consumers do not secure these dressers to the wall and it has long been our view that furniture stability should be built into a dresser and anchoring should be a secondary method of securing furniture. But it should be made safe by design initially,” Feldman said.