Amazon sold me toxic toys, my child has lead poisoning, and my lawyer says I'm screwed.

This is a throwaway account due to legal reasons. I'm sorry that it is long, but I want to let you know so you dont make the same mistake.My son has always been a bit weird, but he started acting a bit strange a month ago (nothing to cause much concern), kids are strange creatures so we wrote it off. He just turned 1, and in the state of NY that means we had to have blood testing done for numerous things, including lead. The results came back showing my son had 20 mcg/dl of lead in his blood... I was told the normal amount is around 2 and could be as high as 10 but still safe. As you can see, my son had twice the maximum you can safely have, which means he was getting lead in his system from somewhere. We immediately took our son to our parents house to try and remove him from whatever the source was until we could figure it out.After weeks of getting our own blood tested (which came back normal), and then testing things like our paint, and toys we were able to determine that 2 of my sons commonly used toys contained lead, one contained (a toy metal stethoscope) came back from the lab with a reading of over 70% lead base. This stethoscope was something my son loved to play with (and put in his mouth =.=) but we saw no danger to it (as it didnt fit inside the ear or amplify sounds like a real one).My son gradually got better under supervision of his wonderful doctors, and in the absence of the two toys. So with my son doing better my husband and I contacted a lawyer about suing Amazon/the manufacturer for the cost of medical bills and minor emotional stress (we werent looking for a handout, just wanted to get back what we lost). After our lawyer researched previous cases against Amazon and contacted them, he told us that since the item was only fulfilled by Amazon, and that the manufacturer was in China and actual seller was a third party that was also in China (zero way to know when buying, as they just ship the goods to Amazon and then Amazon Prime ships them to you) that Amazon was just the middleman and could not be sued, but both the seller and manufacturer could be sued, except they have no entity in the USA so pursuing them is a lost cause. Amazon has since removed the toys, but this incident has cost us $5000 in medical bills and lost wages.TLDR; Be careful when buying items on Amazon, or ebay. They are treated as a middleman for thirdparty sales, and since 20%(?) of third party sellers are from another country, if it makes you/your family sick, burns down your house, whatever, you have nobody to sue for damages. It's much safer to get items from retailers that are not middlemen like Target, Costco, Kohls, etc. Be safe and hopefully learn from our mistake. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2pt569p