Nobody expects the products they buy for their kids to hurt them. You read the reviews and compare brands. You spend more than you probably should because you want the safer option. And then three months later, you get a notification that the high chair, or the stroller, or the crib you have been using every single day has been recalled because it is injuring children.
That is the reality for thousands of families every year. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission handles recalls on everything from bassinets to bath seats, and the reasons behind those recalls are often serious - choking hazards, suffocation risks, fall dangers, and products that can trap or drown a child.
What is worse, most of these defects are not discovered until after children have already been hurt. The manufacturer does not announce the problem voluntarily. The complaints pile up, injuries are reported, and eventually the CPSC steps in and forces a recall. By then, the damage is done for some families.
The Numbers Are Alarming
According to the CPSC, deaths, injuries, and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $1 trillion every year. The agency tracks at least 15.5 million emergency department visits annually that are tied to consumer products, and it reviews roughly 8,000 death certificates each year for product-related fatalities.
Children's products make up a significant portion of those numbers. The CPSC's nursery products report consistently shows that high chairs, cribs, strollers, and infant carriers are among the top product categories associated with injuries to children under five. Falls are the leading cause of those injuries year after year.
Recent Children's Product Recalls
The list of recalled baby and children's products grows constantly. In 2025 and 2026 alone, the CPSC has issued recalls on products including:
- Nursing pillows that can obstruct an infant's airway, creating a suffocation risk
- Baby bath seats that tip over during use, posing drowning hazards
- Infant walkers that fit through doorways and fail to stop at the edge of stairs
- Portable hook-on high chairs with clamps that can detach, causing falls
- Baby bottles with outer shells that peel off, creating choking hazards from loose plastic
- Magnet toys with loose high-powered magnets that can cause intestinal perforations if swallowed
Several of those products were sold on Amazon by overseas manufacturers who have been unresponsive to CPSC requests for corrective action. That is a growing problem. A product that is cheaply made and sold through a third-party marketplace can be nearly impossible to trace back to the company responsible once something goes wrong. A Norfolk personal injury lawyer who handles product liability cases can help identify who is actually liable.
How Product Liability Works in Virginia
Virginia allows injured consumers, or the parents of injured children, to file a defective product liability claim against the manufacturer, distributor, or retailer of a dangerous product. You do not have to prove the company intended to cause harm. You have to prove that the product was defective and that the defect caused your child's injury.
There are generally three types of product defects that can support a claim:
- Design defects, where the product was inherently dangerous because of how it was designed
- Manufacturing defects, where something went wrong during production that made the individual product dangerous even if the design was sound
- Warning defects, where the manufacturer failed to include adequate instructions or warnings about known risks
In cases involving children's products, the standard is higher because the end user is a child. A manufacturer cannot claim that a toddler should have known better than to put a small part in their mouth. The entire point of a child safety product is that it accounts for the behavior of children.
What Damages You Can Pursue
If your child was injured by a defective product, you may be able to recover compensation for:
- Emergency room visits, hospital stays, and follow-up medical care
- Prescription medication and therapy
- Pain and suffering your child experienced
- Emotional distress for both the child and the parents
- Scarring or disfigurement
- Long-term disability or reduced quality of life
- Lost wages if a parent had to miss work to care for the child
Keep in mind that Virginia follows a contributory negligence standard, which means the defense may try to argue that the parent was at fault. That argument is harder to make with children's products, but insurance companies will still try.
Why You Need a Lawyer for These Cases
Product liability claims against manufacturers are not like fender-bender insurance disputes. You are going up against companies with corporate legal departments and budgets designed to make these cases expensive and slow. They will argue the product was used incorrectly. They will argue the defect did not cause the injury. They will point to the fine print in the manual and say you should have read it.
A Norfolk personal injury lawyer who has experience with product defect cases knows how to push back on those arguments. That includes working with engineers, safety consultants, and medical professionals to prove what went wrong and why the manufacturer is responsible.
Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp has focused exclusively on injury law since the firm was founded in 1985. Our attorneys have collectively obtained record-setting verdicts and settlements on behalf of injured clients, including alongside co-counsel in cases that have reached into the tens of millions of dollars. That depth of trial experience matters when a manufacturer's legal team is banking on you giving up.
If your child was hurt by a defective or recalled product, contact Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp to talk about your options. Our legal team has more than 100 combined years of legal experience advocating for injured victims and their families and will work diligently to get you the financial compensation you deserve, like the $750,000 settlement we were able to obtain for one client whose right hand was mangled so badly by a defective tool that doctors eventually had to amputate his thumb.
Call us at 833-997-1774 for a free consultation. We have offices in Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Hampton, Norfolk, and Chesapeake.
