The family of 6-month-old Kennedy Brotherton Jones has sued the Walt Disney Company for its defective bassinets. The family lost their young child this year after he was strangled to death in his Winnie the Pooh bassinet. The family is alleging that the company allowed the sales of these bassinets in spite of knowing that the bassinet’s defective design had been linked to another baby’s strangulation one year ago. According to this news report in the Chicago Tribune, the defective bassinets had a drop-down side for easy access, but that design created a space where infants could slide through and become strangled.

Kennedy Brotherton Jones died on August 21, 2008 after which the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission directed retailers nationwide to stop selling these bassinets manufactured by Simplicity Inc. Disney’s consumer products division apparently licensed its Winnie the Pooh name and image to Simplicity. Kennedy’s family filed the lawsuit in California State Court in Los Angeles.

This lawsuit raises an interesting issue, particularly about a common practice in the children’s products industry. The question here is: Should companies that license their names and characters to other manufacturers be held liable when those products turn out to be defective or dangerous? Apparently, California courts in the past have found that a licensor can be held liable for a defective product. It remains to be seen what course this particular case takes.

Simplicity Inc. went out of business this year because of the flood of recalls relating to its defective children’s furniture, including bassinets and cribs. Several babies’ deaths were attributed to these dangerous and defective bassinets and cribs. Disney officials believe that the company should not be held liable simply because it licensed the use of their characters for these bassinets. They say Disney had nothing to do with the manufacturing of these defective products.

But it seems to me that Disney had the authority to block the sale of these dangerous products. Only 11 months before Kennedy died, a 4-month-old Missouri baby, Katelyn Marie Simon, died after getting trapped in a Simplicity bassinet that shared the same design as the Winnie the Pooh bassinets. Why did Disney not stop the sale of the bassinets before Kennedy’s family bought their defective bassinet? You have to wonder whether Kennedy’s life could have been saved had Disney taken that step.