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The maker of the Hotpoint fridge-freezer blamed for igniting the fire at Grenfell Tower failed to run adequate safety tests before the devastating blaze at the London apartment block, Kensington and Chelsea council has claimed.
Court papers set out details of a lawsuit the local authority has brought against Beko Europe, previously Whirlpool, as part of broader litigation against companies it holds responsible for the fire eight years ago that killed 72 people.
Kensington and Chelsea, which was itself last year criticised by a public inquiry, is suing a range of companies at the High Court for a total of £358mn plus interest following the worst fire disaster in the UK since the second world war.
The fire on June 14, 2017 spread rapidly up the 24-storey building in large part because of flammable cladding installed during a refurbishment of the tower, the inquiry found.
However, the council contends that as well as companies involved in the refurbishment, the maker of the fridge-freezer in the fourth-floor flat where the blaze started is also to blame. The appliance contained materials that could “catch fire and burn easily”, Kensington and Chelsea said in a legal filing.
The local authority previously said that it was pursuing legal claims against Whirlpool, now Beko Europe, which made the fridge-freezer under the Hotpoint brand, but details of its claim against the company have not previously been disclosed.
The west London borough has brought the lawsuit alongside Kensington and Chelsea’s Tenant Management Organisation, which it appointed to manage its housing stock, including Grenfell.
Lawyers representing the claimants, led by David Turner KC and Clare Dixon KC, argue that the company failed to adequately test the materials used in the fridge-freezer model against applicable fire standards.
If the materials — in particular plastic backing, foam and polystyrene — had been properly tested, they would have failed, they alleged in court papers filed this year.
The claimants maintain that the company breached its statutory duty under the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 1994, as the fridge-freezer was not “safe”. They have also brought a claim for negligence.
It “should have been obvious to any reasonably competent designer, manufacturer, and/or supplier of the Fridge-Freezer that the Plastic Backing was not resistant to ignition and/or the spread of fire”, the legal claim states.
Defence documents in the case have yet to be filed with the court.
Whirlpool said in a statement: “Whirlpool Corporation disputes and is vigorously defending the proceedings brought by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It would not be appropriate to comment further on ongoing litigation.”
Beko and law firm Cooley, which is listed as representing it in the case, did not respond to requests for comment.
Whirlpool, listed in New York, finalised a deal with Turkey-based Arçelik last year to combine the two companies’ European domestic appliance businesses, creating Beko Europe.
Whirlpool told the public inquiry that it was not possible to determine the cause of the fire. The company suggested the fire could have originated from a burning cigarette end thrown from a window higher up the building.
However, inquiry chair Sir Martin Moore-Bick, a former Court of Appeal judge, said “the evidence, viewed as a whole, leaves me in no doubt that the fire originated in the large fridge-freezer”.
The inquiry did not establish the “precise nature” of the fault, and Moore-Bick said this was “of less importance than establishing how the failure of a common domestic appliance could have had such disastrous consequences”.
His inquiry identified “many failings of a wide range of institutions, entities and individuals over many years”.
Several companies involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell, which the report said had transformed a structurally sound concrete building into a “death trap”, were found to be at fault.
Kensington and Chelsea is suing a range of suppliers, subcontractors and other companies in parallel High Court actions, arguing that alleged failings by each contributed to the fire’s catastrophic progression.
The local authority itself was also among the bodies the inquiry criticised, including through building control failings.
The council said last year it accepted the findings of the inquiry and apologised unreservedly. The council said it had made significant changes to its operations since 2017.
In a statement, the council said: “We have issued legal proceedings against a number of companies, in line with the council’s ongoing commitment to ensure those parties pay a share of the costs incurred against the public purse.”
