Allegedly defective tools and hardware from a China-based seller on Amazon have been linked to two deaths and at least one serious injury — the latest in an alarming spike in product liability lawsuits against the Seattle-based e-tailing giant, The Post has learned.
On March 25, 2024, Jacob “Jake” Todd — 30-year-old father of three in Menifee, Calif. — was working under his Toyota Tacoma when a car jack he’d bought on Amazon from Vevor, a Shanghai-based third-party seller, buckled and broke.
The grisly mishap caused fatal “blunt force trauma,” according to a January lawsuit filed on behalf of his sons in California state court in Riverside County.
In February, an Alabama truck driver, James Ryan Stokes, was using a Vevor “chain load binder” to tie down items on his flatbed truck when the chain broke, sending him violently backwards and fatally breaking his neck, according to William Poole, a lawyer hired by Stokes’ family.
The 49-year-old trucker left a wife and six children who are preparing a lawsuit against Amazon, Vevor and Austal USA, a ship manufacturer in Mobile, Ala. where the accident happened, according to Poole.
“It was the first time he was using the Vevor product,” Poole added.
Vevor – which has previously drawn whistleblower complaints to US agencies about allegedly fake reviews on Amazon, as reported by The Post – also has amassed 1,430 Better Business Bureau complaints over allegedly faulty products and poor customer service.
Meanwhile, the number of overall product liability cases against Amazon has spiked between 2020 and 2024, when the lawsuits more than doubled to 84 in federal court alone, according to Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company that provides legal data analytics.
“Although the number of federal cases are small compared to Amazon’s [size] the trend shows an identifiable, steady increase of product liability cases that could be reflected in state court as well where the majority of these cases are filed,” Ron Porter, Lex Machina’s legal data expert for product liability told The Post.
Most of the 84 cases have either been settled or dismissed on procedural grounds, although the breakdown isn’t clear, Porter added.
Amazon’s liability over defective third-party products has become a thorny question, with laws and legal outcomes varying from state to state. The company has typically argued that it is not directly responsible for products sold on its site that are manufactured by outside firms.
In 2020, a California state appeals court ruled that Amazon was liable for injuries caused to Angela Bolger, who suffered severe burns from an exploding laptop battery from a third-party Chinese seller called Lenoge Technology. Lenoge, which was named as a defendant, did not appear in court.
“Whatever term we use to describe Amazon’s role, be it ‘retailer,’ ‘distributor,’ or merely ‘facilitator,’ it was pivotal in bringing the product here to the consumer,” the appeals court ruled at the time.
While other states have sided with Amazon in similar cases, the Bolger case is a favorable precedent for plaintiffs – especially where they seek restitution from a third-party seller based in China or another country overseas, according to Keith Hylton, a law professor at Boston University.
“If I had to make a prediction, I would guess the Bolger case will be accepted in most jurisdictions,” Hylton said in an interview.
“I don’t think courts will accept an outcome where Amazon sells dangerously defective products made by foreigners in places where Americans have no legal recourse and escapes liability,” Hylton added. “Holding Amazon liable will force it to do some monitoring, or at least to charge a price that will cover the costs Amazon will bear in compensating injured consumers.”
Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
As recently as May 28, Amazon was still listing the Vevor products that were involved in the two deaths. That’s despite customer reviews that have flagged safety issues — including one purporting to be from a friend of Todd.
“A very good friend of mine died using one of these vevor stands,” the reviewer wrote. “Got crushed when one of the legs failed and what he was welding fell on him, total weight was like 3000lbs supported by 2 of these. RIP jake.”
Vevor, for its part, denies all the allegations in the car jack complaint and declined to comment on the Alabama case as it has not yet been filed, according to a statement from its attorney, Alan Tan.
“As regards [to] the larger question of quality,” Tan added, “we must say that the existence of the above lawsuit against us does not imply in any manner that products sold by us are quality inferior.”
Tan pointed to a return and refund rate in the US of 3% as evidence of the quality of Vevor’s products.
Tan addressed the California wrongful death case in a March 25 letter to a do-it-yourself influencer on YouTube – Jeff King of Den of Tools. King recently posted Tan’s letter on YouTube in which Tan responded to a previous Den of Tools post about Vevor’s products causing deaths and injuries.
Vevor hired a local California litigator who is “working together with the lawyer hired by Amazon to proactively prepare filing answer against the complaint,” according to Tan’s letter.
The letter caught the attention of the Todd family’s lawyer, Vanessa Pena.
”It raises questions that they contacted Amazon’s attorneys to work directly with them,” Pena told The Post.
She added that Vevor reached out to Amazon before it responded to the wrongful death lawsuit on April 10. “It infers me to me that they have a relationship with Amazon’s attorneys.”
The letter from Tan also claims that Vevor is being unfairly attacked with litigation in the US, where it’s facing at least a half-dozen patent and trademark cases alleging that it’s selling knockoffs.
“You correctly pointed out that companies doing business in the US get sued because Americans like to sue no matter who you are or how well you behave,” Tan wrote to King.
Colby Lord of Huntsville, Texas fell more than 40 feet when the “Vevor half body safety harness” he had purchased on Amazon fell apart while he was trimming a tree. He fractured both ankles, his back and left hand, according to his lawyer, Sam Palermo, a partner in the Sorrels personal injury law firm.
Lord’s fall resulted “in serious and lasting injuries,” according to a complaint filed against Vevor and several affiliated companies in federal court in Houston, Texas in October.
Amazon is not a defendant in that case. In 2021, Texas’ highest court ruled that Amazon cannot be held liable for injuries caused by a third-party seller’s product that the e-commerce giant shipped from its warehouse.
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