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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND SHERRY NELLIE REDFORD v. SC JOHNSON & SON, INC., et al. . * * * Civil No. JFM-03-626 * * * ***** OPINION

Defendant SC Johnson & Son, Inc. ("SC Johnson") manufactures Glade PlugIn ("GPI") air fresheners. Plaintiff Sherry N. Redford's ("Redford") home caught fire and was damaged severely on November 17, 2001, an accident she claims was caused by a GPI plugged into a basement outlet. Asserting various product liability claims under Maryland law, Redford brought suit against SC Johnson in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County. SC Johnson removed the case to this court. Discovery has been completed, and now pending before me is SC Johnson's motion for summary judgment. For the reasons that follow, the motion will be granted.

I. Redford's home is located in Indian Head, Maryland. Residing there with her in the fall of 2001 were her two daughters and the daughters' father, Tyrone Butler ("Butler"). (See Redford Deposition at 50-52.) No one was at the home when the fire occurred in the early-morning hours of November 17. (Id.) Redford first learned of the fire while driving home later that morning from a hotel she had stayed at in Waldorf, Maryland the previous night. Mark Lewis, a family friend, had passed by the home and seen it in ruins, and had called her on her cell phone to break the news. (Id. at 58-59.) Upon arriving home, Redford saw for herself the destruction the fire had wrought. Many of her belongings were scattered across her lawn, her roof was almost entirely gone, and the inside of the home had been burnt severely, particularly on the left side. (Id. at 60-61.) 1

Later that day, Redford spoke with Linda Schubert ("Schubert"), a deputy in the Office of the Maryland State Fire Marshal who had accompanied the responding firemen to the home and had conducted a cause-and-origin investigation after the fire had been extinguished. (Id.) Schubert stated that the fire had begun in an electrical outlet located in a basement partition wall. (Id.) She said that she had seen an unidentifiable molten blob of plastic lying beneath the outlet, which Redford told her was probably the remnants of a GPI she had purchased a month-and-a-half earlier from WalMart and had plugged into the outlet. (Id. at 29; Schubert Deposition 39-40, Exhibit B to SC Johnson Reply Br.; see Redford Opposition Br. at 2 ("Redford Br.").) With that information, and having eliminated all other potential causes of the fire, Schubert concluded that the GPI must have overheated and ignited the combustible material within the basement wall. (Schubert Report at 2.) Another deputy visited the fire scene three days later and concurred with Schubert's findings. (Id.) Additionally, he observed several GPIs plugged into electrical outlets throughout the home, and brought one back to the Fire Marshal's office for inspection. (See id; Schubert Deposition at 43-44.) However, he was unable to collect the molten plastic blob as evidence because firemen had removed all debris from the home. Redford had a homeowner's insurance policy with Nationwide Insurance Company ("Nationwide"). In response to her report of the fire, Nationwide hired Ward Caddington ("Caddington"), a fire investigation expert, to visit the home on November 20 and conduct an independent inquiry into the source of the fire. (Caddington Report at 1, Exhibit 4 to Redford Br.) Caddington agreed with the deputies that the point of origin was the basement outlet, and after examining the outlet he concluded that faulty wiring was not the culprit. He therefore concurred in the state deputies' assessment that the GPI must have caused the fire, though he was unable to specify how it had malfunctioned. (Id. at 1, 4.) He recommended that an electrical engineer be retained to survey the fire scene and conduct analyses of prototype GPIs in order to determine any 2

potential defects within the product. (Id. at 4.) Nationwide never followed up on this recommendation, but based on Caddington's findings it did deem the fire an incident covered by Redford's policy. Nationwide proceeded to pay for her home to be demolished and rebuilt. Over one year later, Redford filed the instant action. It was at this time that SC Johnson first learned of the fire.

II. As a threshold matter, SC Johnson contends that Redford has not presented adequate evidence to show that she used any product it manufactured. Because none of the investigators saw remnants of a GPI in the basement outlet, Redford is the only person with personal knowledge of whether a GPI had been inserted in the outlet. Although ordinarily her assertion that she had inserted a GPI in the outlet itself would be entirely sufficient to create a genuine issue of fact, SC Johnson contends that her testimony has been so inconsistent on the question of what type of GPI had been inserted that the record establishes her inherent untrustworthiness. SC Johnson is certainly correct in arguing that Redford has contradicted herself on several different occasions. However, viewing the evidence most favorably to her (as, of course, I must do in considering SC Johnson's summary judgment motion), I cannot conclude that her testimony can be rejected as a matter of law. By way of background, GPIs can be divided into two primary categories: gel-based and oilbased. Relevant to this case is the fact that SC Johnson also produces "extra outlet" versions of the gel-based and oil-based GPIs. These come with their own "plug-thru" outlet on the front of the unit so that consumers can use other electrical devices in the same wall outlet into which the GPI is plugged. For the sake of clarity I will refer to these four types of GPI as: standard gel-based; extra outlet gel-based; standard oil-based; and extra outlet oil-based. As of November 17, 2001, the date on which Redford's house caught fire, only the first three of these GPIs were available for purchase. 3

SC Johnson did not release the extra outlet oil-based GPI to retailers until December 2001, who, in turn, did not place them on sale until January 2002. Three months later, in April 2002, SC Johnson issued a recall for these units, stating that they "may have been misassembled during manufacture, which could pose a risk of fire." (Recall Notice, Exhibit 7 to Redford Br.) The company stated expressly that "[n]o other products, sold under the Glade PlugIns brand names, are part of the recall." (Id.) Before bringing this suit, Redford stated repeatedly that the faulty GPI was a standard oilbased. (See Caddington Report at 3; Examination of Redford by Nationwide at 19-20, Exhibit E to SC Johnson Br.) Confirming these accounts, the GPI that the state deputy fire marshal took from one of the other outlets in Redford's home was also a standard oil-based. (See Schubert Deposition 4344.) After the litigation began, however, the picture painted by Redford began to change. On September 15, 2003, SC Johnson sent its expert electrical engineer, James Finneran ("Finneran"), to visit Redford at her home. Finneran claims that during the visit Redford told him that the GPI she had used was not oil-based, but instead was a standard gel-based in the shape of a seashell. (Finneran Affidavit

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Maryland Law