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Evenflo has History of Child Car Seat Defects
February 26, 2008

There's bad news for parents whose kids are strapped into Evenflo child car seats. Lawyers are alleging that the million-strong recall of the Ohio based company's car seats leaves out older models that have serious defects in them.

In the first week of February, Evenflo announced a recall of one million car seats that it said were potentially defective. The car seat models in question were 390, 391 and 552 and customers with these models of car seats were asked to avail themselves of a free fastening system that Evenflo maintained would help solve the problem. These seat models date from April 2005 to January 2008.

Now, lawyers who have filed other lawsuits against Evenflo for injures caused by defective car seats say that the recall leaves out older models that have equally serious defects. Furthermore, they contend that the company knew that there were problems with its car seats all along.

One case involves a Florida family whose son was injured when his Discovery car seat made by Evenflo came apart during an accident in 2002. This lawsuit alleges that Evenflo was aware of the lawsuits pending against its product and failed to bring it to the attention of authorities. The company has a record of tainted car seats going back a while, lawyers allege. Back in 2004, an inquiry into the Discovery car seat safety was launched by the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) after there were complaints that the car seat came apart on impact. In all, the inquiry found a total of 52 reports including 21 injuries and six fatalities. For inexplicable reasons, the agency decided that there was no reason for alarm and concluded that a defect related issue was absent.

But other experts in the field had differing opinions. According to Gary Whitman, a crash test engineer with ARCCA, there is enough evidence that links the defects in the car seat covered by the 2004 investigation and the most recently recalled car seats.

What this means is that there may be car seats with serious defects that include breaking apart on impact on the market and parents are unaware of it.

Evenflo's record has had other safety-related stains. Last year a judge ordered the company to pay a family of a child $10 million after it was found that the plastic shell of the car seat came apart during an accident causing the car seat to slip out from under the belt. That child, a 4-month-old baby was killed.

Shockingly enough, the case revealed that Evenflo had performed tests involving that particular car seat where the shell cracked on impact and they let seats like that be put on store shelves anyway. As expected, Evenflo denied any fault of their car seat in the child's death and contend that when the vehicle rolled over the child must have hit his head on the ground and this caused his death. A child in a car seat is supposed to be safely secured in without any chance of being thrown about when an accident occurs.

Evenflo has much to answer for. Even more important, the company needs to immediately own up to the fact that families across the country may be strapping their babies in to defective car seats they produced.

If your child has been injured in a defective car seat, you need the assistance of an aggressive California personal injury attorney. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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