A recycling facility operator in Georgia, United States, has won a judgement of US$31 million after it sued a battery manufacturer over a recycling facility fire caused by lithium-ion batteries.
Metro Site Fabricators settled a lawsuit with SK Battery America after what Metro Site Fabricators alleged was improper disposal of batteries.
SK Battery America manufactures lithium-ion batteries in its Georgia factory. Investigators looking into the event – which completely destroyed the recycling facility – found that the fire occurred after hundreds of lithium-ion batteries were sent to the facility, rubbed up against one another, which in turn led to a thermal runaway event.
Read more: Battery fire causes tens of thousands in damages
A owner of Metro Site Fabricators, Scott Ledford, alleged that the batteries were dropped off at the facility, which is not permitted to handle batteries. SK Battery is a subsidiary of Korean conglomerate SK Group, who did not admit liability as part of its settlement but came to terms to pay $20 million in punitive damages and $11 in tort-related claims and damages to Metro Site, according to the the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Ledford said it was due to how the batteries arrived at the site that they were able to identify who was responsible for leaving them at the recycling facility. They arrived in lithium-ion pouches that showed they were manufactured at SK Batteries Georgia facility. He stated, that under normal circumstances it would be hard to identify the origins of the batteries, which means usually there is no avenue to find compensation.
Although SK Batteries didn’t admit liability, Ledford made sure that part of the agreement was that he would be able to talk about the event publicly. This wasn’t so much to name-and-shame SK Batteries, but more about helping other facilities navigate both the physical issue of a fire at a facility, as well as the legal implications and the action Ledford and his lawyers took once they had identified the product that they alleged caused the fire.