Samsung Battery Burns: What the Official Records Say

How a Battery Can Burn Someone, and Why the Cause Matters to You

Lithium-ion batteries store a large amount of energy in a small space. That is what makes them useful in phones, laptops and power banks, and it is also why a failure can release that energy quickly, as heat and sometimes flame.

The failure most often described is thermal runaway: a self-reinforcing cycle in which heat inside a battery cell sets off chemical reactions that produce more heat. Once the cycle starts, the cell can vent gas, catch fire or rupture, which is why a device can go from warm to burning in a short time.

Most rechargeable devices include a battery management system, the electronic circuit that monitors each cell's voltage, temperature and state of charge and works to keep the battery inside safe operating limits. When a battery fails despite that system, the questions usually become whether the cell itself, the circuit, the charger or the way the product was designed or built played a part. Those are questions of fact, and an overheated or burned device does not answer them by itself.

The burns that follow generally fall into a few types. Contact burns come from touching, holding or carrying a device that has become very hot or is burning, which matters for phones because they are so often in a hand or a pocket. Chemical burns can come from exposure to the electrolyte, the liquid or gel inside the cell, if it leaks or sprays when the cell vents. Fire-related burns happen when the device ignites clothing, bedding, furniture or a car interior.

If you were burned, this matters because the cause of the failure, not the fact of the burn, is what any later claim turns on. That is why the device, the charger and an account of how the burn happened tend to carry weight, and why an attorney can help sort out which part of the device may have failed. The site's general page on lithium battery burn injuries covers these mechanisms at greater length.

What the Samsung Recall Records Mean If You Were Hurt

Two recall notices published by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal agency that oversees consumer product safety, name Samsung Electronics America Inc., of Ridgefield Park, N.J., as the manufacturer and describe a burn hazard. A recall is a safety action for a specific product: it identifies the product and the hazard, and it offers a remedy such as a repair, a replacement or a refund. Both notices concern the Galaxy Note7 smartphone.

The first is CPSC recall 16-266, "Samsung Recalls Galaxy Note7 Smartphones Due to Serious Fire and Burn Hazards," dated September 15, 2016. Its hazard statement reads: "The lithium-ion battery in the Galaxy Note7 smartphones can overheat and catch fire, posing a serious burn hazard to consumers." The notice states that it involves the Galaxy Note7 sold before September 15, 2016, lists about 1 million units, and names refund and replacement as the remedy.

The second is CPSC recall 17-011, "Samsung Expands Recall of Galaxy Note7 Smartphones Based on Additional Incidents with Replacement Phones; Serious Fire and Burn Hazards," dated October 13, 2016. Its hazard statement reads: "The lithium-ion battery in the Galaxy Note7 smartphones can overheat and catch fire, posing serious fire and burn hazard to consumers." The notice states that it involves all Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphones, including devices received as replacements in the September 15 recall, and lists about 1.9 million units, a figure it says includes the 1 million recalled in September.

Each notice also reports incidents in its own words. The September notice states that Samsung "has received 92 reports of the batteries overheating in the U.S., including 26 reports of burns." The October notice states that Samsung "has received 13 reports of burns" associated with Note7 phones. These are reports received, as the notices describe them, not proof of what caused any particular injury.

Three limits matter when reading these records. A recall is not a finding that the product injured anyone. It is not a finding that the company is liable. And these notices describe the specific products and units each one names, the Galaxy Note7, not Samsung products generally. Federal law sets out what a recall notice ordered by the Commission is to include, among other items a description of the hazard and the number and description of any reported injuries, under 15 U.S.C. § 2064; that content describes a hazard, not a court's judgment about any one injury.

For someone hurt by a Samsung device, the practical question is whether the device was one these notices name. If it was a Galaxy Note7, the notices are part of the background; if it was another Samsung product, they do not speak to it. Questions worth raising with an attorney include which model the device was and whether a record shows where and when it was bought. The site's Galaxy Note 7 recall records and its page of Samsung recall notices citing burn hazards set out the notices in more detail. Neither notice describes battery swelling, which the site's page on Samsung battery swelling records addresses separately.

Records and Information That Often Matter After a Battery Burn

After a burn, much of what can later be shown about a battery failure comes from ordinary records and objects. A legal claim, an insurance process or a product-safety report generally turns on them, because they are how anyone outside the room learns what the device was, what happened and what the injuries were.

If you were hurt, the records that usually matter include medical documentation of the injury, the diagnosis and the treatment, from the first visit onward. They tend to show the type and extent of a burn in a way nothing else can.

Photographs and video often matter too: images of the device, the burns and any property damage, taken once it was safe to take them. Pictures record conditions that change as wounds heal and rooms are cleaned.

The device itself is frequently central. People in this situation often keep the phone or other device, its charger and any case or accessories, in the condition they were in after the incident, where it is safe to do so. For a battery failure, the physical product is often the main evidence of whether a cell, a circuit or a charger failed and why.

Proof of purchase tends to answer which product this was and where it came from: a receipt, an order confirmation or an order history. For a recalled phone, it can also bear on whether the unit is one a notice names.

Reports made at the time can matter as well, including a fire department report, a police report or an incident report from a workplace, school or building. So can the names and contact information of anyone who saw what happened.

What a person does with any of these, whether to sign something, whether to talk with an insurer or a company, is a question for a conversation with an attorney, not one this page decides. That conversation can help sort out which of these records bear most on a particular situation and why.

Who May Be Responsible for Your Burn

A family looking at a burned device often wonders whether responsibility rests with the company whose name is on it, the store that sold it, or someone else. The law's answer begins with product liability: the area of law that can hold parties in a product's chain of distribution responsible for injuries caused by a defective product. That chain can include a manufacturer, an importer, a distributor and a seller, and in some situations a repairer or a company that supplied a replacement battery or charger.

For a person holding a burned phone, the question is what kind of problem the product may have had, and the law generally recognizes three. The design itself may be unreasonably dangerous, even when every unit is built exactly as planned (a design defect). The particular unit may depart from the intended design, for example through a production error (a manufacturing defect). Or the product may have lacked adequate instructions or warnings about a risk (a failure to warn). Which one is alleged shapes what evidence matters, and the device itself is often central to telling them apart.

A federal regulation describes defects in a similar way, though for a different purpose: it guides when a manufacturer, distributor or retailer must report a possible defect to the Commission. Under 16 C.F.R. § 1115.4, "a defect is a fault, flaw, or irregularity that causes weakness, failure, or inadequacy in form or function," and "a product may contain a defect even if the product is manufactured exactly in accordance with its design and specifications, if the design presents a risk of injury to the public." It also states that a defect "can also occur in a product's contents, construction, finish, packaging, warnings, and/or instructions." In plain terms, a problem can lie in how a product was made, how it was designed, or what it told the user. That regulation governs reporting to the agency; injury claims themselves are decided under state law.

A product liability claim generally has to show a defect in the product, a causal link between that defect and the injury, and damages. Whether those elements are present depends on the facts, including which product was involved, what happened to it before the incident, how it was charged and used, and what the physical evidence shows. A fire or a burn, on its own, does not establish a defect or anyone's fault.

How your own conduct is weighed also depends on where you live. Some states use comparative fault, which reduces a recovery in proportion to the injured person's own share of fault; others follow contributory fault rules. No single state's rule applies everywhere. Things a person may weigh before talking with an attorney include who sold the device, whether its battery or charger was ever replaced, and how it was being charged and used. The site's overview of lithium battery injury claims explains this framework more generally.

How Your State's Law Shapes a Burn Injury Claim

State law decides most battery burn cases, and the rules that matter most differ from one state to the next: the deadline for filing, how fault is divided, and which kinds of loss the law may allow. No state's rule is the rule everywhere, and California is one state among fifty.

The deadline is set by a statute of limitations: the period within which a lawsuit must be filed, after which a court will typically dismiss the claim. Limitation periods for personal injury and product liability claims vary by state, and so does when the period begins to run, whether from the date of injury, the date the injury or its cause was discovered, or another event. Some states also have exceptions, for example for minors. For someone recovering from a burn, this means the time available is not the same everywhere, and a conversation with an attorney about the facts and the state involved is how a person learns which rule governs. If you would like that conversation, you can request a case evaluation.

When a battery fire takes a life, the law may allow a wrongful death claim: a claim brought by surviving family members when a person dies because of another party's wrongful act or a defective product. Who may bring that claim, and what it may include, differ by state.

The kinds of loss the law may allow are generally described in categories: medical expenses, lost income, pain and suffering and property damage, and, in wrongful death cases, loss of companionship and financial support. Whether any of these is available, and how it is measured, depends on the state's law and the facts. For a person weighing medical bills and time away from work after a burn, that variation is part of why the same incident can be treated differently in different places. Texas and California each have their own pages on this site, at Texas lithium battery injury law and its California counterpart.