Rick:

Just a little background behind the story.....

I was personally involved in that court case and can conclusively tell you that two tests, a field test and an agreed upon independent third-party lab exam, proved forensically that the fire was not caused by the cooling unit leaking and did not occur as the plaintiff suggested in trial. It was interesting to note that during the trial, that testing results were not mentioned by the plaintiff or their experts, and apparently 9 of 12 jurors found this very interested once it was brought up by the defense.

It is important to note, that contrary to the allegations made in the article, the facts are that the number of actual confirmed fires are far less than the reported allegation incidents. In the historical log of alleged incidents, there are numerous fires where Norcold was placed on notice of a claim by a plaintiff attorney or claimant only to find out later that the unit was not a Norcold product, rather it was either a competitor's unit or an unauthorized aftermarket 3rd party modification of the OEM equipment. I personally had many fires relating to owner issues including tampering and disabling of recall kits, failure to get the recalls fixed (in one case up to 11 recall notices issued to the owner without the owner fixing the problem), failure of the owners to perform the required yearly service and maintenance as stated in the coach and appliance service manuals, and finally the mis-installation of recall kits by the repair facilities/mobile technicians. It is very interesting to note that those situations are not mentioned in the article. It is very likely that the other attorneys being criticized in the article likely considered all of these factual reasons in their decisions and actions.

RV Absorption Refrigerator Manufacturers take these allegations and situations very seriously. Yes there are times when there are fires relating to these units, but the actual number of fires is far less than that proposed by parties in the article.

If you or anyone else are interested in more facts relating to the article or other issues, please feel free to contact me at your convenience.