$787 Million Damages Verdict Against an Absent Vietnamese Bunk Bed Maker After a Columbus Toddler Died in a Ladder Gap

On May 22, 2018, a two-year-old boy identified in the federal record as J.B. was playing with his brothers in their Columbus home when he became caught in the gap between the top step of his bunk bed ladder and the frame of the upper bunk. One of his brothers saw it happen. His mother found him trapped in the ladder. The Franklin County Coroner ruled the cause of death positional asphyxia due to chest compression between the bunk bed and the bunk bed ladder.

The bed was a Fremont Twin over Twin Bunk Bed sold under the Angel Line brand, bought online. Charles H. Cooper, Jr., as administrator of the boy's estate, sued in Franklin County Common Pleas in May 2020. The defendants removed the case to the Southern District of Ohio, where Daniel R. Mordarski of the Law Offices of Daniel R. Mordarski LLC and Charles Steven Rabold of Miraldi and Barrett represented the estate. Named as defendants were Longwood Forest Products, the New Jersey importer; Angel Line; three Wayfair entities; and Moash Enterprise Company Limited, the Vietnamese company that designed and built the bed.

In December 2021, while the case was pending, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that Longwood Forest was recalling about 39,900 Angel Line bunk beds with angled ladders. The recall notice cited the death of a two-year-old boy in Columbus in May 2018.

Moash never appeared. Attempts to serve the company under the Hague Convention failed for more than a year, and the court required monthly status reports on service beginning in February 2021. In April 2022, Judge Michael H. Watson authorized service by email. Moash was served that way on May 10, 2022, and still did not answer. The clerk entered default on July 29, 2022.

That matters for what the numbers mean. On July 22, 2022, the estate stipulated to dismissal with prejudice of Longwood Forest, Angel Line, and Wayfair LLC. The court's earlier order had referred to them as the settling defendants. No settlement figure appears anywhere in the public docket. Whatever the family actually received almost certainly came from that agreement, not from the verdict that followed.

With liability established by default in November 2022, the court held a jury trial in August 2023 on damages alone. Moash was not there and no one appeared for it. The jury returned $787 million: $175 million in compensatory damages on the survival claim, $90 million in compensatory damages on the wrongful death claim, and $522 million in punitive damages.

On October 11, 2023, the court applied Ohio Revised Code 2315.21(D)(2)(a), which limits punitive damages to twice the compensatory damages on the survival claim, and reduced the punitive award to $350 million. Judgment entered for $615 million with post-judgment interest at 5.46 percent. Plaintiff's attorneys waived the attorney's fees the jury had also awarded.

The judgment stands against a company in Vietnam with no United States assets identified in the record, and the docket shows no collection activity after entry. The court kept ancillary jurisdiction to handle enforcement if it ever becomes possible.