Evenflo Facing Lawsuits Over Booster Seat Safety Concerns
Last Updated on May 31, 2023
Investigation Complete
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At A Glance
- This Alert Affects:
- Anyone who purchased an Evenflo Big Kid booster seat.
- What’s Going On?
- Multiple class action lawsuits have been filed alleging Evenflo deceived parents into believing its Big Kid booster seat was safe when it actually puts children “in grave danger.” Attorneys working with ClassAction.org want to speak to people who own the seats in an effort to gather additional people to strengthen the litigation.
- How Is a Class Action Going to Help?
- A successful lawsuit could force Evenflo to recall the car seats, change the product’s labeling and give parents their money back.
Multiple class action lawsuits have been filed alleging that Evenflo has deceived parents about the “rigorous” side-impact safety testing behind its Big Kid booster seats and put children “in grave danger” in an effort to increase sales and keep up with its competitors.
Evenflo Crash Test: “Meaningless at Best, Dangerous Deception at Worst”
Evenflo markets its Big Kid booster seat as “side-impact tested” and “meet[ing] or exceed[ing] all applicable federal safety standards.” What the company fails to disclose, however, is that there are no federal standards for testing car seats in side-impact collisions; these standards exist for head-on crashes only.
The lawsuits claim Evenflo took advantage of this “regulatory gap” and concocted its own side-impact testing.
Evenflo, however, allegedly set the bar so low that a test would pass so long as the crash dummy didn’t end up on the floor and the booster seat didn’t break into pieces.
One technician alleged that in his 13 years with the company, he had not seen a single test receive a failing grade, despite the fact that dummies were being thrown out of the seat’s shoulder belt, which, in the event of a real crash, could cause a child to suffer catastrophic head, neck or spinal injuries.
In sum, these self-created tests, one lawsuit claims, are “entirely unrelated to the actual forces in side-impact collisions” and “are meaningless at best, and a dangerous deception at worst.”
Safety Concerns Over Booster Seat’s Weight Limit
Evenflo has also represented for years that its booster seat is appropriate for children weighing as little as 30 pounds, in direct contradiction to safety recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, according to the suits.
In February 2012, a safety engineer for Evenflo recommended to executives that the weight minimum of the booster seat be increased to 40 pounds. The lawsuits claim Evenflo failed to heed the engineer’s advice because it would put the company at a considerable disadvantage in the face of competitors Graco and Dorel. “Put simply,” one suit says, Evenflo “put profits ahead of child safety.”
Had Evenflo been honest about the real dangers presented by its Big Kid booster seat, no parent would have ever purchased the product, the suit claims.
How Could a Lawsuit Help?
A successful class action lawsuit could force Evenflo to recall and stop selling the booster seats, as well as properly label all Big Kid booster seats going forward. Parents may also be able to get back some of the money they spent on the products.
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