Family Settles for $5 Million in Recliner Suit

The parents of a small boy who was nearly killed four years ago when his head was crushed in a reclining-chair accident have settled their lawsuit against the recliner’s manufacturer and a furniture retailer for $5 million, the family’s attorney said Friday.

Robert M. Barta, the Los Angeles attorney representing Susan and Richard Lundblade of Garden Grove and their son, Michael, now 6 years old, said that despite warnings by the federal government, older-model recliners continue to pose a danger to small children.

“There are still millions of these reclining chairs in the nation, and each of them is a ticking time bomb,” he said.

Barta said older-model recliners have an open space between the footrest and the seat cushion when in a reclined position. “Little children can put their heads in that gap, and their body weight on the chair’s footrest closes it like a vise, and chokes off the child’s oxygen supply,” he said.

Last month, Barta negotiated a $5-million, out-of-court settlement for the Lundblades. The family had filed a civil suit in Orange County Superior Court in 1987 against Levitz’s, a retail furniture chain, and the Mohasco Corp., a Chicago-based manufacturer of recliners.

According to Barta, Michael was 1 1/2 years old when he climbed onto an older-model reclining chair at his Garden Grove day-care center. The child’s head became squeezed between the cushion and the footrest as it closed, crushing his head, Barta said.

The little boy, who was unconscious and barely alive, was rushed to UCI Medical Center in Orange. He survived the accident but suffered “irreparable brain damage,” according to Barta.

Barta said the 6-year-old “is severely physically disabled. . . . He was left with impaired motor skills, and cannot walk yet and is not really able to talk, although he can put two or three words together.”

Nonetheless, Barta said, Michael is doing better than initially expected. “It was first believed that Michael would be in a coma stage the rest of his life,” he added.

Francis Breidenbach, a Los Angeles attorney who represented both Levitz’s and the Mohasco Corp., said the settlement with Lundblade family was “a compromise in a very serious, very tragic case that we were concerned about.”

Breidenbach said the defendants agreed to the $5-million settlement because of the prospect that a jury might have awarded a substantially larger amount to the child and his parents. “We were concerned about an enormous sympathy factor,” Breidenbach said.

“A verdict range in such a case potentially could run up to $10 (million) and $12 million. We thought, that considering that risk, that $5 million was appropriate.”

In July, 1985, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission issued its first national warning about reclining chairs. It said that the danger lay in the opening between the chair seat and the footrest when in a reclined position. Newer-model reclining chairs, usually those made since 1987, do not have such openings, according to the federal safety commission.

The panel issued another warning in July, 1987.

Both warnings noted that three children had died and two had suffered serious brain injuries because of accidents in recliners. That statistic did not include Michael Lundblade’s injury.

No effort, however, was made by the commission to seek safety repairs or a recall of older-model recliners, according to Ken Giles, a commission spokesman.

Barta criticized the safety commission for not being more aggressive in warning owners of older-model recliners. He said that if the commission chose not to demand a recall, it should have at least required the manufacturers to send out warning letters.

Giles said that the agency mainly tries to get defects corrected so that no new items are built containing possible hazards. “We are mainly proactive rather than being retroactive,” he said.

Giles also said that it would be very difficult to try to track down owners of recliners built before 1987. The consumer agency has estimated that there are at least 40 million recliners in the nation now. It did not have a breakdown on how many of those were built before 1987.

Susan Lundblade said in an interview Friday that she hopes more people nationwide are alerted to the danger of recliners built before 1987.

“One of the things my husband and I wanted to do was to help warn people about this danger,” she said.

She is co-operator of a pediatric physical-therapy facility in Costa Mesa. Her husband is a used-car sales manager in Westminster.

Michael, his mother said, is entering a special kindergarten this fall. She added that he is making some progress in physical therapy.

“My husband and I have great hopes for progress in his recovery,” she said. “The doctors have always been guarded in their predictions, but we’ve always been more hopeful than that in thinking of Michael’s future.”