Fisher-Price Hammock Deaths Reviewed by House Committee
In June of 2021, a Congressional committee produced a report describing the results of its investigation over the last two years of the Rock ‘n Play Hammock produced and sold by Fisher-Price and Mattel, two giant corporations in the children’s and infant’s toy and products market. This device was a sleeping hammock designed for infants that held the baby at a 30-degree angle of inclination for nighttime sleeping. The extensive investigation included documents from the design, production, and sales of the sleeper by Fisher-Price, as well as interviews and testimony from company employees and investigators from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which had earlier conducted its own investigation into the Fisher-Price hammock deaths.
What Did Congress Discover?
The Congressional report concludes that Fisher-Price failed to make certain that the product was safe for sleeping infants before selling the product to consumers and that the company ignored warnings after the sleeper went on sale in 2009. These warnings — including concerns from pediatricians — sought to flag the product as unsafe for its designed use.
The report notes that Fisher-Price (a subsidiary of Mattel) continued selling the product despite these warnings; it further notes that at least fifty infants died while in the Rock ‘n Play Sleeper before Fisher-Price was eventually forced to take the product off shelves in 2019. During testimony, Fisher-Price executives revealed that the death toll was actually more than 90 babies who had died while in the Sleeper.
What Made the Product Dangerous?
More than four years before the Rock ‘n Play Sleeper was put on the market, the American Academy of Pediatrics advised that infants should always be placed flat on their backs on a firm surface for sleep. A Fisher-Price internal document, in fact, noted this advice a year before the Sleeper went on sale, and observed that the Rock ‘n Play Sleeper did not meet this requirement. Fisher-Price apparently sought no advice whatsoever from any pediatrician during the design and development of this baby sleeper product.
How Did Fisher-Price Keep the Sleeper on Shelves?
In additional to marketing the Rock ‘n Play Sleeper in 2009, Fisher-Price later opposed design standards put forth by the CPSC that would have required infant sleep products to have no more than a five-degree inclination in order to meet the pediatricians’ sleep guidance. Fisher-Price successfully fought these new regulations, resulting in voluntary design guidelines being adopted that allowed up to a thirty-degree incline (exactly that of the Fisher-Price product).
The mounting number of deaths compelled Fisher-Price to finally recall the product in April 2019, only after numerous deaths and the sale of some 4.7 million sleepers.
Findings and Results
More than thirty wrongful death actions are underway across the country against Fisher-Price and Mattel related to the Rock ‘n Play Sleeper. In addition to its findings related to this specific product, the House of Representatives committee also issued recommendations for improving the role of the CPSC in protecting people — and especially infants — from unsafe and dangerous products.
The video below provides the full Congressional committee hearing from June 7, 2021 on the Mattel/Fisher-Price Rock ‘n Play Sleeper:
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