LG Ordered To Pay £150k After Phone Defect Caused Scotland House Fire

A Scottish woman who suffered a house fire in 2018 has won her case against LG after a judge ruled that her work-issued phone caused the blaze.

Sheriff Robert Fife of Edinburgh Sheriff Court said [PDF] that "on the balance of probabilities," the LG K8 supplied to Denise Parks by North Lanarkshire Council, her employer at the time, was the likely cause of the fire.

The Sheriff awarded Parks £149,496 ($199,897) in damages, much of which will be allocated to her insurer, which paid out £95,385.75 ($127,539.81) in 2020, plus interest of £47,598.49 ($63,644.98).

Parks and her husband, Robert, were woken at around 0300 local time on October 31, 2018, by smoke filling their Coatbridge house.

The case centered around which company's product caused the fire, which was localized to the living room. After retiring to their bed the previous evening at around 23:00, the couple left three devices on their sofa, all plugged in and charging for the following day.

These devices were an Acer Aspire ES 13 laptop, a Samsung Galaxy S7, and an LG K8. All were plugged into the same extension cord.

Forensics experts Darren Green and Mark Phillips were drafted in to assess the damage to the Parks' home and the devices themselves. 

They looked at the state of the devices after the fire, finding that both the Samsung and Acer were not significantly fire-damaged, unlike the LG.

According to Green and Phillips' joint report, the inside of the LG battery was fire-damaged. The battery was distended, had a hole in it, and most of the plastic and combustible materials of the device's body were consumed by the fire.

Conversely, there was little fire damage to the Samsung's internals or externals, and although one of the three pouch cells inside the Acer's lithium-ion battery was missing, the two that remained were undamaged.

The LG K8 was being charged by an HTC charger, which was not substantially damaged. The voltage and amps delivered by it were also within LG's guidelines, and the charger was not deemed to be the cause of the fire.

Emergency services treated Denise Parks for smoke inhalation, and a psychologist concluded that she suffered a worsened mental condition following the fire.

Sheriff Fife noted that Parks had a history of anxiety and panic attacks, a condition that was exacerbated because of the fire. As a result, she was absent from work for three months, between November 2, 2018, and February 7, 2019. 

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Per Parks' employment contract, she had to repay North Lanarkshire Council £2,261.48 ($3,023.49), including interest, in sick pay for the time she was not in work.

Sheriff Fife said in his judgment: "At the time the fire started, the LG was in normal use, being charged by a suitable charger, and in circumstances in which a standard product would not have failed. The court was entitled to draw an inference that the LG was defective. The LG did not meet the standard of safety that persons generally are entitled to expect.

"Accordingly, I have concluded there was a defect in the LG in terms of section 3(1) of the [Consumer Protection Act 1987] and the pursuer has established a breach of section 2 of the 1987 Act by the defender, on the balance of probabilities."

The Register approached LG for a statement. ®