In April, Ikea issued an urgent alert after three children were crushed by the drawers of their MALM line. Warned of the danger that these drawers have for children if they are not anchored to the wall, since they can climb and, due to their instability, knock it down getting crushed underneath.
In June, the Swedish firm announced that it was withdrawing the comfortable MALM in the United States and Canada (in Spain it did not retire) and after judicial mediation, reached an agreement to pay 50 million dollars (48 million euros) to be distributed among the three families.
Since domestic accidents are more frequent than we expect (they happen every day more than two thousand deaths of children for unintentional injuries in the world), home safety when there are young children is paramount.
Sometimes the risks are where we least imagine it, such as the laces of blinds and curtains, the television control, as well as in the drawers and the television furniture, taking into account the innate curiosity of the little ones.
Curren Collas, Camden Ellis and Ted McGee, were the three two-year-old children who died crushed by the comfortable MALM when they hit them for not being fixed to the wall. In their demand, the families They claimed that the design of the dressers is not safe, which made them "unstable" and "easily overturned."
And although in the assembly recommendations it is recommended to fix the product to prevent it from tipping over, the plaintiffs claim that the Swedish manufacturer had repeatedly refused to comply with voluntary safety standards for the stability of their dressers and drawers.
The agreement includes Ikea making three donations of $ 50,000 to three hospitals in memory of the three deceased children and another $ 100,000 to the Shane's Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to child safety.
