A mobile phone battery is at the centre of $1.2m claim resulting from a fire last year at a warehouse in Wichita, Kansas.
In a lawsuit filed last week managers of the property, Anderson Management, claims the fire – which caused around $640,000 damage to its warehouse storage facility and its business – was caused by a battery which overheated in one of two mobile phones left in the premises to charge overnight.
In addition, the tenants of the warehouse, who ran a business distributing processed foods, are claiming $535,000 damages for losses to their business. Both plaintiffs claim the fire and subsequent losses were due to the defects in the mobile phone’s battery.
The defendants are the retailers of the phone, Sprint Spectrum; phone manufacturers Sanyo North America and Kyocera Telecom Equipment; and mobile phone battery manufacturer Sanyo Electric.
According to a report in the Witchita Eagle, fire department investigators could not confirm what caused the fire, but they only found one of the two phone batteries after the fire.
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