THERE IS AN INTERESTING CASE IN OHIO where a free smoke detector was installed with an intelligent home system as a promotional add-on explicitly not intended to be a primary or code-compliant fire safety system. Thereafter, a resident died from smoke inhalation resulting from a fire. The husband of the descendant, who is the administrator of her estate, filed a lawsuit seeking to hold the alarm company responsible for damages resulting from the fire, alleging that the alarm company was negligent. The defendant alarm company filed an action for summary judgment claiming that its only possible liability lies in contract — not tort — and therefore is entitled to summary judgment on any claim sounding in tort.
The alarm company claimed that the free smoke detector supplied with the system was a promotional add-on explicitly not intended to be a primary or code-compliant fire safety system. In addition, the alarm company claimed that the smoke detector began to send dying battery signals but, despite their reaching out to the descendant with several notices of the problem and with free replacement batteries, there is no evidence that they ever replaced the batteries, and she canceled a service call that the alarm company set up.