Fatally Flawed Recliners
& Lift Chairs

Recliner chairs are found in millions of living rooms and dens in homes around the world.  They have long been considered a great source of comfort and relaxation.  But their owners and users are oblivious to the hazards they pose and unaware that children can become entrapped between the ottoman or foot rest and the body of the chair, causing severe injury and even death.

The chairs which present the most danger are those with an opening of more than 4 ½ inches when they are in the reclined position.  In most cases, the child climbs over an extended ottoman, and either slips into the opening or reaches through the opening to retrieve an object.  The weight of the child on the extended ottoman closes the opening on the child's neck, head or chest, thereby causing suffocation or asphyxiation.  The chair opens so easily that even a very small child or the weight of a pet can lift the ottoman into the reclined position.

Safetyforum.com is aware of at least 23 incidents of entrapment in recliner chairs and one incident of entrapment and strangulation of a child in a hospital bed.  The recliner mechanism in the hospital bed was manufactured by Super Sagless.

Of the 23 recliner chair entrapment reports, 21 involved injury or death to children, two injuries to elderly adults, and the death of one elderly man.  The adults were injured when a leg or limb became entrapped, and they were unable to extricate themselves.  One elderly woman was trapped in a recliner for 72 hours.  The first child's death of which we are aware occurred in 1973.  Given the long history of these chairs and their popularity, it can be assumed that the number of known deaths and injuries  understate the very real potential for danger which recliners pose.

The industry has been made aware of the hazards recliners present through customer complaints, news reports and lawsuits for a number of years.  The earliest lawsuit brought to our attention was filed in the mid 1970s following an incident involving a 21 month old boy in New York who was injured in a chair manufactured by Cleveland Chair Company.  The second such lawsuit was brought against Futorian Corporation, predecessor of Mohasco Corporation, and was triggered by the death of a toddler in Wisconsin.  It is believed that the recliner mechanism in this chair was manufactured by Super Sagless Corporation.

Futorian and Super Sagless were both Mohasco-owned companies.  The companies made no changes in the design of their mechanism after the lawsuit was filed.  They continued to manufacture the chairs, although their representatives testified that it would have taken only one complaint for them to change the design of the chairs.  In 1994, both Mohasco Corporation and Super Sagless, then owned by Leggett & Platt, settled a suit in Alabama involving a severely brain-damaged child.

In March 1983, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recognized a pattern of injury and/or death to small children which could be associated with upholstered recliner chairs found in practically every home in America.  The agency discovered through its monitoring mechanisms that three children had died and three others had suffered severe injury between January 1980 and March 1983, when their heads became entrapped between the seat and the foot rest of the chairs.

Other deaths and injuries had been reported to the CPSC prior to 1980, but the agency failed to recognize or identify the hazard.  They subsequently became aware of at least nine other incidents between July 1973 and April 1983 involving recliner chairs, all of which occurred as children were climbing onto the leg rests while the chairs were in the reclined position.  The youngsters became entrapped when their heads entered the opening between the chair seat and the leg rest and their body weight forced the leg rest down.  At least two other injuries were reported between April 1983 and November 1985.

In April 1984, the CPSC wrote to the industry's trade association, the American Furniture Manufacturers Association, advising of the "potential hazard" of recliners.  AFMA indicated it would address the problem and that a technical committee or task force composed of representatives of its members would be formed for that purpose.  AFMA then contacted its member manufacturers, advising them of the CPSC's notification and scheduling a meeting to address the issue.  AFMA requested that the manufacturers' representatives attending the meeting bring with them any information on "your company's past experience dealing with consumer injuries and what action was taken to resolve the matter."

Amazingly, not one single manufacturer mentioned entrapment concerns or that they had been party to any previous lawsuits.

Again in December 1984, the CPSC wrote to AFMA about this issue advising of a new injury that had occurred in the interim.  And the AFMA once again indicated the industry would address the problem, but proposed a delay until additional CPSC studies of shapes and sizes of children's heads were completed.  The CPSC, however, urged the industry to proceed on existing information rather than waiting for the completion of the studies.  Additional meetings were held between AFMA, the manufacturers, and CPSC.

Representatives of AFMA, the manufacturers, and the CPSC finally met in March 1985.   A full year after the first notification by the CPSC, the industry had taken no action to correct the hazard.  During that time, three more children were injured.

AFMA advised during the meeting that there were approximately 24 million households in the U.S. with recliner chairs.  Recorded testimony from a manufacturer's representative, however, indicated that more than 40 million chairs were sold.  The association said the solution to the problem would be complicated because of the different mechanisms used to make the assorted brands and models of recliners.  (In actuality, there were and still are only a few mechanism designs, and they are simple devices.  The basic mechanism is the same for most chairs.)

At the meeting, the industry was asked by CPSC to participate in a jointly issued consumer alert as an interim step to the conclusion of the industry committee's work to address the entrapment hazard.  The industry agreed to the joint alert with the proviso that they would have control over the wording.  Between March and June of 1985, several drafts of the alert were prepared by CPSC representatives and rewritten and restructured by the industry.  The alert, which was eventually issued in June or July 1985, contained language written by the industry which omitted much of the warning information suggested by CPSC in its drafts.  The industry deleted the CPSC's description of the hazard and the potential for fatal injuries to children, and decided on one of only a handful of alerts that had ever been issued without a graphic illustrating the danger.

In November 1985, AFMA advised the CPSC that its Technical Committee planned to establish voluntary guidelines by the fall of 1985.  It was already the fall of 1985, however, a year and a half after CPSC's initial notification.  In its letter, AFMA stated that the Committee had "agreed to recommend" the placement of cautionary labeling on recliner chairs and to "recommend" that manufacturers install devices to reduce the opening and restrict access between the extendable leg rest and the seat of mechanized furniture.  It indicated voluntary conformance by recliner manufacturers no later than October 1986.

In November 1986, however, yet another child suffered permanent brain damage when he became entrapped in a recliner chair and mechanism manufactured by Mohasco Corporation and Super Sagless.  A lawsuit was filed and subsequently settled for $5 million.

A spokesman for the industry had indicated that the guidelines were "likely" to be adopted by "all recliner   manufacturers to avoid product liability ‘problems'."  Ironically, the "fix" the industry devised to reduce the opening between the leg rests and chair seats was proposed by Super Sagless whose representative sat on the Technical Committee, although Sagless was not "technically" a member of AFMA.  The manufacturer member was its parent company, Mohasco Corporation.

A February 1986 cost benefit analysis performed by Paul Rubin of the CPSC noted an extremely low rate of fatalities - one in 53 million chairs - related to the entrapment hazard.  Assuming the value of a life to be worth $1 million dollars, he estimated the cost of deaths associated with recliners was less than $1 million per year, or about two cents per chair.  It is not known if the analysis addressed severe injury, brain damage, etc.   Rubin determined that a remedial strategy that would be fully effective in eliminating the hazard would be cost effective only if it added less than 20 cents per chair to the consumer cost.  He pointed out that the labeling program recommended by the Committee could have been instituted for less than 20 cents per chair, but that it was not likely to be fully effective.

The label eventually put on the chairs warned that brain damage or death could occur as a result of strangulation.  In the event the program was effective, the cost of $750,000 per year would be considered cost effective.  His final recommendation was that nothing be done beyond mentioning this product in safety alerts, along with others that lead to entrapment.  The deaths and injuries that have occurred are tragic, he indicated, but the incident rate is extremely small, and it is not clear that any remedial actions could be cost effective.

There is some question as to whether this analysis was ever actually seen outside the CPSC.  An April 1986 memo exists which refers to "cost to manufacturer to install a mid-ottoman...estimated to be approximately 1 to 2 dollars per chair, the increased cost to the consumer could be 4 to 6 dollars per chair".

After a long dance between the industry and the administrator of the CPSC, the recliner mechanism manufacturers in 1987 developed a wooden bar with fabric covering that could be installed on the mechanism to eliminate or decrease the size of the opening.  The manufacturers were free to "voluntarily" use this mid-ottoman, and the mechanisms were sold with them as optional devices to be installed by the chair manufacturers.  A Super Sagless representative was quoted as late as the summer of 1995 saying that they still sell the mechanism without the device for 50 cents less.

Most subsequent designs on the better chairs have completely eliminated the openings.  However, some manufacturers, such as Astro-Lounger, are still building and selling "lower end" or promotional chairs with openings in excess of 4-1/2 inches with no mid-ottoman or other devices to prevent entrapment.  In fact, several manufacturers in the late 1990s were still selling the "old" design chairs.

Lift Chairs

Lift chairs are recliners which have been manufactured with an electrically operated lift specifically for use by at-home patients or those in health related facilities.

According to Ken Casey of Larksville, Pennsylvania, who has researched designs and components that could make lift chairs safer, a risk exists when a lift chair is accidentally lowered onto a foreign object, thereby trapping the object between the wooden part of the chair and the steel frame.  With most manufacturers using low-volt, whisper-quiet electric motors, Casey says, the resulting pressure on any object caught in a chair's vise-like grip is powerful.

Casey also provided details about a 15-month old boy who was killed in 1994 in Guymon, Oklahoma, when his two-year old sister was operating the hand switch on a lift chair and accidentally lowered it onto the toddler's head, trapping him between the upholstered section of the chair and the steel frame.

On June 4, 2000, the British publication, News of the World, reported the death of an eight year old child who was choked to death by his grandmother's orthopedic chair.  He became trapped in the chair's electrically operated lifting and reclining mechanism after crawling underneath.  The seat's motor was activated, and a metal bar crushed his throat.

There have been at least four more injuries in the U.S. since 1987, including Christie Robinson, a child who was entrapped in the recliner mechanism of a hospital bed which was equipped with a device manufactured by Super Sagless.  That case resulted in a lawsuit against Super Sagless which was settled.

Casey believes recliners and lift chairs can be made safer.  Why would anyone risk not doing so, he asks.  "There is so much to lose."

(07/11/02)