Dropside Crib Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against Walmart, Simplicity Settled

A Florida woman whose daughter was found strangled to death in a defective drop side crib manufactured by Simplicity, Inc., has reached a wrongful death lawsuit settlement with Walmart and the now defunct crib maker.

The September 2007 death of Constance Bergey’s 2-year-old daughter, Serenity, was one of the factors in a series of nationwide Simplicity drop side crib recalls spanning 2006 through 2009. One of those Simplicity recalls, affecting one million cribs, was issued just two days after Serenity’s death.

Defective Simplicity cribs have been linked to at least 11 infant deaths, including the death of a seven-month-old baby from Kentucky as recently as September 2009.

The Simplicity drop side crib deaths, which kept occurring after federal regulators recalled the cribs, and after the company went out of business, have led the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to issue new child furniture safety rules that require manufacturers of cribs, high chairs, gates, strollers and other infant and toddler furniture to provide registration cards with each product and maintain a list of registered consumers. The registration would be used to alert as many consumers as possible if there is a product recall.

The settlement was approved on March 3 between Bergey, Walmart and Simplicity, but the details were kept confidential.

More than 2 million Simplicity drop side cribs have been recalled in recent years due to the failure of the crib’s plastic hardware, which can cause the drop side to detach or separate from the crib. The Simplicity recalls were issued in December 2005, June 2007, September 2007, September 2008 and July 2009.

Simplicity Inc. went out of business in 2008 in the wake of the crib recalls and infant deaths. Many of the major retailers who sold Simplicity products, such as Toys “R” Us, Wal-Mart, Target, J.C. Penny and Kmart have agreed to accept returns.

Bergey’s lawsuit, which was originally scheduled to go to trial in February, is one of several baby crib lawsuits that have been filed against both Simplicity and major retailers, such as Wal-Mart, in connection with Simplicity drop side crib deaths. In addition, a number of major retailers and manufacturers have stopped selling drop side cribs due to repeated problems with drop side cribs.

The settlement in the Bergey lawsuit was reached just after the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office reopened an investigation into Serenity’s death, after originally wanting to charge Bergey with manslaughter in 2008. Originally, detectives and Florida child welfare officials said that Serenity was kept in filthy conditions in a home with a history of drug use, and were concerned that her body showed signs of being dead far longer than the family reported. However, prosecutors declined to press charges against Bergey at the time.