LEGAL NEWSLINE

JACKSON, Miss. (Legal Newsline) - Korean electronics manufacturer LG Chem Ltd. can be sued in Mississippi over a lithium battery attached to a vaping device that exploded in a woman’s pocket, the state’s highest court ruled, reversing a lower-court decision dismissing the case for lack of jurisdiction.

Noting LG faces at least 44 similar lawsuits around the country, the Mississippi Supreme Court rejected LG’s argument it warns consumers against using its batteries for use in vaping devices and couldn’t control where they are sold or used. 

“At some point LG Chem has to stop acting surprised,” the court said in an Oct. 13 decision. “Here, a Mississippi plaintiff was injured in Mississippi by a product she had purchased in Mississippi. The state’s interest in adjudicating the dispute is high.”

Melissa Dilworth sued LG after an LG 18650 lithium-ion battery exploded in her pocket, causing second- and third-degree burns to her groin, legs and fingers. Her husband also sued LG for lack of consortium. 

A district court dismissed the suit after LG argued the state didn’t have personal jurisdiction over the company because it didn’t sell the batteries for use in vaping devices in Mississippi. It said the vaping equipment manufacturer got the batteries, which are used in laptops and even golf carts, through unauthorized channels.

The Supreme Court reversed, saying it didn’t matter whether LG specifically sold batteries for vaping devices in Mississippi. It sold them for other uses, meeting the test the U.S. Supreme Court has laid out for establishing the “minimum contacts” a company must have with a state to exercise personal jurisdiction. Most recently, the high court in 2020 ruled that plaintiff Adam Bandemer could sue Ford Motor Co. in Minnesota over an accident in that state involving a Crown Victoria that had been manufactured in Canada and first sold in North Dakota. 

In this case, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled, LG sells millions of batteries across the nation each year in many different products, including in Mississippi. That meets the test for personal jurisdiction, the court said. It cited for support a similar case in Georgia, where a man using the same battery for a vaping device suffered “disfigurement to his legs, scrotum, and right hand.”

“While the consumer’s purported misuse of the product may be a valid merits defense for LG Chem to raise as the case proceeds in circuit court, it is not an argument that defeats a prima facie case of personal jurisdiction,” the Mississippi court concluded.

LG warns consumers not to use its lithium-ion batteries for e-cigarette, vaporizers or similar devices because they can catch fire or explode if not contained in a battery pack with proper circuitry. “The well-known risks of misusing Li-Ion Cells in these devices have been recognized by the FDA, the US Fire Administration and the Consumer Technology Association,” the company says on its website.