A COUPLE have been slapped with a hefty £350,000 court bill after dodgy DIY wiring to a freezer in their shed caused a fire that burnt their neighbour’s house down.
A judge has ruled that Turney and Sue Logan are liable for the blaze which destroyed both their own home and that of neighbour Christopher Stanley-Smith in 2018.
The two terraced houses in the Lancashire village were effectively destroyed by the fire in 2018[/caption]
A judge has ruled Mr and Mrs Logan are responsible for the destruction of their neighbour’s house, because they failed to get the wiring checked or redone by an electrician[/caption]
The reason given was that they never asked an electrician to check over an amateur wiring job done by Mrs Logan’s ex-partner over a decade earlier.
The two terraced houses in Calder Vale, near Preston, Lancashire, were effectively destroyed by the fire, which investigators said could have been caused either by a carelessly discarded cigarette end or an electrical fault relating to wiring leading to a freezer in one of the couple’s garden sheds.
The electrics had been put in 13 years earlier by one of Mrs Logan’s ex’s and consisted of “a domestic grade extension lead for internal use with a four socket end” which had been fed through a hole drilled in the wall of the house and into one of the couple’s two sheds.
Mrs Logan’s former partner was described as an “office worker rather than an electrician or builder,” with “no electrical training or aptitude and no particular enthusiasm or skill in DIY”.
Judge Stephen Davies at the High Court in Manchester has now ruled that the amateur wiring job was to blame for the fire and that Mr and Mrs Logan are responsible for the destruction of their neighbour’s house, because they failed to get it checked or redone by an electrician.
The judge went on to award Mr Stanley-Smith, who had sued at the behest of his home insurance company, £350,000 in compensation.
The court heard that the fire in Vale Terrace, Calder Vale, in May 2018 destroyed both the Logans’ home and that of neighbour Mr Stanley-Smith, after spreading from their shed to an adjacent conservatory and then to the houses.
Both Mr Stanley-Smith and Mrs Logan had lived in their homes since 1991.
Firefighters worked through the night with eight engines with aerial support, but were unable to save the properties, partly due to safety concerns caused by a full propane gas cylinder located next to the blazing shed.
Mr Logan later told investigators that the electrics in the couple’s house had all gone off and that about half an hour later he was “completely taken aback” to see flames “shooting out” from under the shed housing the freezer.
The houses were gutted and had to be rebuilt, with a subsequent investigation identifying possible sources of the fire as the dodgy freezer cable or a cigarette end flicked by a neighbour.
Judge Davies has now ruled that the wiring was at fault and that the couple must shoulder the blame for what happened as they never had the extension lead checked.
He said that in 2005 Mrs Logan had given her ex permission “to provide an electrical supply to the rear shed” but that he was “an office worker rather than an electrician or builder.”
“What he decided to do and what he did was…to drill a hole in the rear wall…obtain…a domestic grade extension lead for internal use with a four socket end… remove the plug from the cable, draw the cable through the hole, to reconnect and connect the plug to an existing electricity socket located at low level…to run the cable…so that it entered the shed where the plug of the fridge could then be connected to the cable so as to provide an electrical supply for it to be used.
“On their evidence, neither Mrs Logan from the start nor Mr Logan when he moved in gave the question of whether the cable constituted a safety risk any real thought.
“Mrs Logan appears to have regarded it as something…which had never caused a problem and which she had continued to use for her freezer because it was convenient and was there.
“She accepted in cross-examination that she knew that electrics presented a danger if incorrectly installed and used, not just because of the risk of electrocution but because of the risk of fire, which is why she would always have used an electrician to undertake any electrical works.
“However, because it was a cable serving a freezer in a garden shed it did not occur to her that this fell within the category of electrical works.
“She did not really give any thought to the difference between a domestic grade and an external grade cable, with the latter being armoured to give protection against physical impact, including rodent damage,” the judge said.
‘ELECTRICAL FAULT’
He added that an expert assessing the evidence had found that “the simplest and most straightforward explanation for the fire is that it resulted from an electrical fault on the extension lead’s cable” and that “taking the evidence as a whole… a defect on the electrical cable, arising from it not being of a suitable standard for the purpose to which it was put, provides the most likely accidental cause of the fire”.
He concluded: “When one stands back and considers not just the strength of the probability of the cause being rodent damage, due to the unsuitability of the cable for external use… I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the cause was indeed rodent damage to the cable.
“Whilst I have sympathy for the defendants, because I am not finding for a moment that they acted recklessly or in any way grossly negligently, I do find that they did not satisfy the duty of care which they, in common with all property owners, are under as owners of property to the owners of their neighbouring properties.
“Mrs Logan, as the then sole legal owner… authorised in legal terms the installation of the cable.
“She knew [her ex] was not a qualified electrician and had no reason to believe that he was someone who had sufficient competence as a DIY enthusiast to undertake electrical work with the same competence as if he had been a qualified electrician. She also made use of the installation subsequently, knowing that she was doing so, over a lengthy period.
“Mrs Logan also knew, or at least ought to have known, that this use of the cable was different from someone occasionally running a domestic extension lead to a shed for occasional use whilst cutting a hedge or for putting up lights on a pergola [and] was plainly intended to be a permanent arrangement.
“She ought to have asked herself whether she ought either to ask an electrician for a quotation to make this into a safe permanent connection or, at least, to ask an electrician whether it was safe to use the existing set-up on a permanent basis.
“As regards Mr Logan, the same applies to him when he became joint owner of the property…he ought to have had the same thoughts and acted on them.
“The risk was of fire starting and spreading to adjoining properties. I appreciate that they may never thought of this specifically but, had they thought about the risks of the cable use long term, they ought to have done.
“It is obvious that if they had called in or asked a qualified electrician for advice on that point they would have been alerted to the safety requirements of the Building Regulations, would have been advised that the cable was not suitable and that what was required was that a safe permanent installation be provided which could be certified by an electrician.
“I am also satisfied that, had they received that advice, they would have acted on it and the fire would not, on the balance of probabilities, have occurred.
“In the circumstances, as I have said, involving a qualified electrician at the outset or, later, to advise and/or inspect, would on the balance of probabilities have revealed the problem and remedied it and, thus, the fire would have been avoided.
“For all of the above reasons I find that the claimant has proved his case and is entitled to damages in the agreed sum of £350,000,” the judge concluded.
The houses of Christopher Stanley-Smith (right centre) and Sue and Turney Logan (left centre) In Calder Vale, after they were rebuilt following a 2018 fire.[/caption]
A fire caused by an amateur wiring job done by Mrs Logan’s ex-partner (not shown) has been blamed for the cause of the blaze[/caption]
