When the failure of a smart product leads to a fire, the challenge of how smart home applications should be evaluated and examined as a potential cause becomes a more complex undertaking than the failure of a similar but dumb product.
Lawyers who defend manufacturers in product liability fire losses will likely be the first to challenge expert findings from a fire scene investigation and laboratory analysis of evidence and artifacts collected post-fire if IoT-connected products found at the scene are not addressed in a way that takes into account the new complexities and vulnerabilities. In particular, the ability to "rule out" an IoT product rather than point to it as a cause may be more problematic if the investigator and experts retained to conduct the cause and origin investigation fundamentally do not understand the complexity of the smart products − or until the standards catch up with the technology.
Read H. Michael O'Brien's most recent contribution to IoT literature, " The Impact of the Smart Home Revolution on Product Liability and Fire Cause Determinations."
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