Danny's Story

Secret settlements are used to suppress information on public health and stories about safety hazards.

On May 12, 1998, 16-month-old Daniel Keysar died at his licensed childcare facility. He had been playing in a Playskool Travel-Lite portable crib, which had rotating top-rail hinges. The crib collapsed, trapping his neck in the "V" of its folded rails and strangling him.

Shortly thereafter, Danny's parents, University of Chicago professors Linda Ginzel and Boaz Keysar, discovered that the Playskool Travel-Lite crib, manufactured by Kolcraft, had been recalled in 1993. Recalls or other corrective actions had been issued for other portable cribs and "play yards" for various reasons such as risk of serious injury or death if mis-assembled; choking or entanglement hazards; head entrapment or suffocation; and risk of injury from tipping when legs on the product become loose and separated.

Kolcraft produced 11,000 Playskool Travel-Lite cribs. Three children died in the model in use at Danny's daycare facility before the 1993 recall, and a fourth in 1995. Danny was the crib's fifth victim. A 10-month-old New Jersey baby became the sixth child to be strangled by the Playskool crib just three months later, giving the crib a "kill ratio" of more than one for every 2,000 units sold.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, at least ten other children have died in cribs with similar designs sold under other brands. From 1990 to 1997 more than 1.5 million portable cribs with a similar dangerous design were manufactured. Although the recall campaign began in 1993, it is still open because an unknown number of the Playskool cribs are still in use. In 2004 the manufacturer doubled its reward for return of the folding cribs.

Once they discovered that their son's death was not an accident, but a tragedy that occurred as the result of a flawed product safety system, Danny's parents mobilized their grief into a movement for positive change and founded Kids In Danger (KID). They also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Kolcraft (the crib's manufacturer) and Hasbro (the corporate owner of the Playskool brand)

In the course of discovery they learned that the defendants had settled several earlier cases secretly. The effect of such secret settlements is that the public and the news media are less likely to learn of dangers to public health and safety—and bereaved parents are often left in the dark, believing that their child's death or injury is their fault. According to Dr. Marla Felcher, an independent author and Adjunct Lecturer at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, "[c]onfidential settlements have become the norm in industries like juvenile products, where a company's financial health rests heavily on its ability to project a nurturing, caring safety-conscious public image." See E. Marla Felcher, "Safety Secrets Keep Consumers in the Dark," Trial, April 2001 at 40, 49; E. Marla Felcher, It's No Accident: How Corporations Sell Dangerous Baby Products (Common Courage Press 2001).

On the day their trial was scheduled to begin, Ginzel and Keysar settled their case for $3 million, but only after rejecting repeatedly the same demand Kolcraft had made successfully in other cases—that they keep the settlement secret!

Kids In Danger (KID) works to reform the juvenile product system so that potentially dangerous products never reach the marketplace. For their tireless efforts on juvenile product safety Ginzel and Keysar have received public service awards from Volvo Cars of North America, Parenting magazine, Allstate Insurance Company, Chicago magazine, and the AAJ-affiliated Civil Justice Foundation. In 2000 President Bill Clinton awarded them the President's Service Award—America's highest honor for volunteer service—for their work in the area of national public safety.