The California man who suffered burns over half of his body after his cell phone ignited while in a pants pocket Jan. 6 is planning to hold a press conference with his lawyer as soon as tomorrow at UC Davis Medical Center, a source tells me.
While a lawsuit springing from this accident is certainly no surprise, details of that legal action are unknown to me at the moment. Arrangements for the press conference were ongoing as of this afternoon, the source says. Meanwhile, also still unknown — at least to all but the parties directly involved — is the identity of the manufacturer and the model of the phone that burned 59-year-old Luis Picaso in his residential hotel room in Vallejo, Calif.
(Thursday update: It was a Nokia phone … and Nokia has gotten the fire investigator to flip-flop about the cause.)
While the phone maker is the obvious target of any lawsuit here, it may not be the only one. I’m certainly not going to be shocked if the City of Vallejo and its on-scene fire inspector, William Tweedy, are caught in the legal crosshairs over Tweedy’s theory about how the fire started and his comments regarding Picaso’s condition at the time of the fire.
From an earlier post this morning:
The on-scene fire investigator (Tweedy) told me yesterday that the blaze was triggered not by any malfunction in the cell phone or its battery but rather the intoxicated victim having fallen asleep on his activated phone. According to this theory, the continuous depression of the phone keys — not any malfunction or battery flaw — caused the phone to overheat, and, because the victim’s state rendered him unable to physically sense the impending danger, the overheating eventually caused the fire.
That’s the theory … and it strikes me, by no means an expert on such matters, as extraordinarily unlikely, in large part because such a continuous-depression scenario would seem altogether common and thus should be causing many a cell-phone fire. They are extremely rare, experts say, and almost always involve 6some kind of malfunction.
I have spent much of the day trying to cajole a cell phone maker — any cell phone maker — into fessing up about being involved here, and giving all the others a chance to profess their relief. I’ve had no success on the first part and very little success on the second, as getting definitive answers from these companies has proven to be a frustrating experience (I mean even more than usual).
Motorola’s Director of Communications and Public Affairs Alan Buddendeck — who could not possibly have been more obtuse — finally managed to confirm (at least I think he confirmed) that Motorola has not been contacted by the authorities investigating the fire in Vallejo. Since those authorities have indeed been in contact with the toasted phone’s maker, this would seem to mean that Motorola’s off the hook — although Buddendeck’s attitude leaves me cautious about making any blanket statements.
Keith Nowak at Nokia and Kimberly Schram from the company’s PR agency caught the hot potato there. Both said they would look into it and get back to me. Nothing yet aside from they don’t know and the people they’ve asked don’t know.
Drew Crowell, an outside public relations representative for Sony Ericsson, told me he would inquire within Sony Ericsson and get back with an answer be it yes, no, or we don’t know (even though the maker of Picaso’s phone does know). Nothing yet.
Phone and e-mail messages have been left with Samsung public relations professionals Jessica Redman and Ashlee Lane. Zip as of now.
Esra Ozer from Siemens may have come closest to a clean answer, telling me by e-mail: “We do not know which company manufactured the phone in question.”
It could be another company altogether, of course.
This much I do know for certain: We’ll have the name soon enough.
