Similar incidents have occurred thousands of times over the past decade, according to the Nixes’ lawyer, Terrence Beard, as refrigerators that operate on a potentially explosive mixture of hydrogen and ammonia leak and catch fire, torching recreational vehicles and mobile homes and causing at least one death. Most of the refrigerators were Norcold brand units manufactured Thetford Corp., which is owned by the pioneering private-equity firm Dyson-Kissner-Moran. DKM’s owners, the Dyson family of New York, have earned enough from Thetford and other businesses to fund a $250 million foundation, multimillion-dollar gifts to Cornell and Washington and Lee colleges as well as a Le Mans automobile racing team.

“This is a public-safety issue,” said Beard, a Pittsburg, Calif. trial lawyer who got his start in postal-worker dog-bite cases and won a $500,000 settlement in a Norcold case last year. “These refrigerators are burning up at a rate of three to five a week.”

Not only is Beard locked in a legal battle with DKM, but he’s also fighting class-action lawyers who were once his allies, but now are trying to settle with Norcold for a fraction of the cost of replacing hundreds of thousands of defective refrigerator cooling units. Attorneys at Zimmerman Reed and Ridout Lyon & Ottoson earlier this year negotiated a $33 million settlement with DKM that would pay the average Norcold owner $57 and do nothing to force the company to change its design.