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Nested Bean claims its weighted baby blankets and swaddling wraps (“sleep sacks”) induce sleep in infants. The Consumer Product Safety Commission believes such products are responsible for killing over a hundred children.
Los Angeles mother Roz Saedi filed a lawsuit against Nested Bean on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, alleging the company knowingly and deceptively sold millions of inherently dangerous weighted baby blankets Saedi claims that her baby struggled to breathe the two times her baby slept in the sack. The lawsuit, which seeks damages and an order barring Nested Bean from selling weighted sleep products, arises amid increasing scrutiny surrounding such products stemming from medical organizations and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) calling their safety into question.
The products are marketed as sleep aids for infants and their weight is designed to mimic a parent’s touch.
A spokesperson for Nested Bean called the lawsuit “total garbage“, insisting the products are a safe and effective sleep tool used by millions of babies.
Young Infant Injuries
Young infants have weak skulls, underdeveloped lungs, and weak minds, making them vulnerable to injury in these areas.
Reckless birthing tactics often injure infants’ heads. Such tactics generally arise early in the prenatal care process. For instance, doctors often fail to identify indications that a delivery will be difficult, such as evidence of maternal diabetes or a maternal history of difficult deliveries, or identify such indications but fail to take proper precautions.
Many issues can happen in the delivery room, especially regarding shoulder dystocia (SD) injuries. If the baby is too large to drift down the mother’s birth canal, the umbilical cord could cause hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) —an injury similar to drowning — in under five minutes.
Babies are so fragile that a slight degree of force could cause a permanent injury. Therefore, serious injuries are very common when doctors take such extreme measures.
Weighted baby blankets could damage underdeveloped lungs, another common infant weakness. The products’ excessive force essentially works to crush a baby’s lungs.
Infant injuries could also occur in hospital settings. For example, Bronchopulmonale Dysplasie (BPD) is a chronic lung disease affecting primarily newborns, most of whom are born prematurely and need oxygen therapy. BPD damages an individual’s lungs and the airways (bronchi), causing tissue destruction (dysplasia) in the tiny air sacs of the lung (alveoli).
Lung injuries, such as BPD, much like head injuries, such as HIE, are usually permanent. When a healthy child becomes a disabled child, families are often emotionally devastated, especially if that change is due to a doctor’s negligence.
Government Recalls
Government watchdogs, such as the CPSC and the Food and Drug Administration, cannot unilaterally recall dangerous products. Instead, they are merely able to publicly pressure companies to do so.
Absent such public pressure, companies usually do the minimum required to avoid liability. For instance, a company that sells a lot of contaminated vegetables from a dirty factory will likely recall the tainted lot, but fail to address the factory’s hygiene issues, thereby solving the immediate problem but making it likely that the factory will eventually produce another tainted lot.
Matters involving wrongful death or product liability could settle out of court. When a lawsuit settles, courts generally issue consent decrees, which typically places a company under court supervision for at least a year. While under such supervision, courts send safety inspectors to company factories to verify whether standards are up to industry levels.
If your baby has experienced serious injury or death after using a Nested Bean weighted blanket or swaddling wrap, you should consider speaking with an experienced and compassionate attorney.