Settlements and Verdicts

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Injuries to Children

Confidential
An eight-figure products liability settlement against a leading smoke detector manufacturer and major mobile home company where a family of seven perished in a fire. The victims, including five children ages four to eleven, suffered severe burns and smoke inhalation causing their deaths.  The victims’ mobile home came equipped with smoke detectors with ionization technology which failed to provide a timely warning of, what the Pennsylvania State Police investigators determined, was a slow and smoldering fire.

Confidential
$6 Million settlement for cardiac defect (tetralogy of fallot) in an infant which went undiagnosed and untreated, resulting in death of the infant.

Jane Doe v. Philadelphia Daycare Center
$5.75 Million settlement for wrongful death of a two-year-old at a Philadelphia daycare center. In 2006, a little girl’s older brother arrived to pick her up from a local Philadelphia daycare center, only to find the workers who were responsible for her care could not find her. He eventually discovered his little sister slumped on a tricycle wedged under a jungle gym outside in the playground. While waiting for the arrival of the EMS, not a single employee attempted to do CPR or first aid on the toddler. She was then rushed to the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia (CHOP) after the EMS was unable to resuscitate her. The toddler lost consciousness after her daycare teachers failed to properly supervise her causing severe injuries including hypoxic brain injury, or suffocation, and cardiac arrest. The toddler died a few days later after being declared brain dead while maintained on life support throughout the duration of her stay at CHOP.

Tompkins, Natasha on behalf of Ariaha Riley, A Minor v. Confidential
$2.9 Million settlement for a products liability action involving a 3-year-old girl who was burned by an electric potpourri pot. The child suffered partial thickness burns on her right arm, right breast and shoulder. The Defendants were aware that the pot was defective and had injured other young children, but continued to market and sell it. The potpourri pots were sold without adequate warnings about the dangers and/or hazards posed by using it on a daily basis.

Jane Doe v. Harbor Freight, et al.
$2.225 Million settlement for an 11-year-old burn victim. The plaintiff, an 11-year-old girl, sustained second- and third-degree burns to her thighs and abdomen after her nightgown ignited from a space heater. Products liability claims were filed against defendants, DESA International, Inc., and Harbor Freight, as the manufacturer in interest and distributor of the Glo-Warm space heater, and against Richard Leeds International, Inc., and Wal-Mart, as the designer and distributor of the nightgown. It had been alleged that the heater was defective since the grill guard allowed clothing to pass through and ignite rapidly from the pilot light of the heating tiles. It had been alleged that the cotton nightgown was defective since consumers were not warned that the garment was unsafe for a child, that it was not flame resistant, and that it did not comply with the children’s sleepwear regulations. This case was settled prior to trial for $2,225,000 with payments in a structured annuity expected to total an additional $4.7 million over the course of the plaintiff’s lifetime.

Confidential
$1.5 Million recovery for birth trauma. Negligent use of forceps on baby’s skull during delivery, resulting in neurological injury to baby’s arm and leg.