Lawn Equipment and Residential Fires: Fluke Accidents or Liability Cases?

Every summer, lawns get mowed, gas cans get filled, and—occasionally—fires break out. Most are small and quickly extinguished, but some cause significant damage or injury. When they do, the question quickly arises: was this a freak accident, or is someone responsible?

A Case in Point

In one case, a man drove his lawnmower to a shed, parked it, and began refueling. Within moments, vapors ignited, flames spread, and his young son was badly burned. The claim that followed alleged a defect in the mower itself—that it “suddenly exploded” without cause.

When I inspected the equipment, the story was more mundane, but no less tragic. The mower’s exhaust was still hot from use. Gasoline spilled during refueling, vaporized, and ignited on contact with the heat source. The physics are simple, the outcome severe.

Accident or Liability?

For a claim to move forward, someone needs to be responsible: a manufacturer, a service provider, or the operator. But not every fire has a clean line of liability.

• Design responsibility: Could a manufacturer have added shielding, sensors, or interlocks to reduce risk? Possibly. But the question becomes whether such measures are technically reasonable and economically feasible—or whether they cross into preventing routine human error.
• Operator responsibility: Refueling near a hot exhaust is inherently risky. Courts and carriers must weigh whether the act itself created the hazard, regardless of product design.
• Maintenance and service: In other cases, a poorly fitted fuel line or compromised hose assembly may point toward a shop or technician. That wasn’t the case here, but it often is in heavy equipment investigations.

The reality is that some fires are simply flukes—unfortunate combinations of fuel, heat, and timing. In those situations, “the juice may not be worth the squeeze,” as I often say, because the chain of causation leaves too many openings for doubt.

The Takeaway

Lawn equipment fires highlight a truth I see often in forensic work: not every loss traces back to a defect, and not every accident is preventable. The role of a forensic engineer is to separate what’s possible from what’s probable, and to document the evidence so clients can make informed decisions about coverage, liability, or litigation.

Sometimes the box really is to blame. Other times, it’s just spilled fuel meeting a hot muffler on a summer afternoon.

About the Author

Lucas Brown, P.E., CFEI, is a mechanical consulting engineer at EDT Forensic Engineering and Consulting. He leverages more than a decade of experience to evaluate the origin and cause of fire and explosion, and to provide consultation related to mechanical systems and machinery, HVAC systems, mechanical design, failure analysis, damage assessment, and the interpretation of codes and standards.