Ikea recalls more furniture due to tip-over risks to children

Ikea is recalling 820,000 of its Kullen three-drawer chests due to the risk of the product tipping over and crushing children.

The announcement made Wednesday, with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, comes two months after the popular Swedish retailer agreed to pay $46 million to the parents of a 2-year-old boy killed by an Ikea Malm dresser in California in 2017.

The recall also comes amid a flurry of furniture products being pulled from the market because of the tip-over risk.

The CPSC has announced seven recalls of chests and drawers since September because of the danger, along with a rare product safety alert for a four-drawer dresser made by Hodedah that the agency considered so dangerous that it decided against waiting for the manufacturer to agree to a recall. Most recalls are made voluntarily by a company after negotiating with regulators.

The CPSC is also crafting mandatory safety regulations for furniture to prevent children from being crushed. Furniture tip-overs were blamed for 89 deaths, mostly children, from 2014 to 2018, according to the agency.

The Ikea Kullen dresser is unstable if it is not anchored to the wall, posing the risk of injury or death to children, according to the CPSC recall announcement. Three-drawer versions of the Kullen chest imported after Aug. 12, 2019, also do not comply with the voluntary performance standards. Customers have the option of seeking refunds or a wall-anchoring kit for the furniture.

About 17.3 million Ikea Malm chest and drawers were recalled in 2016 and 2017. But the parents of Jozef Dudek of Buena Park, California, who were represented by Philadelphia’s Feldman Shepherd law firm, said they never knew about the recall and the retailer never contacted them. The boy was killed in May 2017 when he climbed on the short dresser and it fell on top of him, according to court records.

Jozef was the eighth child known to have died by an unsecured Ikea dresser’s toppling forward and the first death confirmed after the furniture giant’s recall of more than 17 million bureaus in 2016. Six months after the recall, Ikea paid $50 million to the parents of the three toddlers, including 2-year-old Curren Collas of West Chester, who died after a dresser toppled onto them in 2014 and 2015. The Feldman Shepherd firm also represented the three families in that case.

— Staff writer Ellie Rushing contributed to this report