In this case, the plaintiff claimed that a lighter exploded in his face. But we were sure, following a cursory examination, that the lighter had seen concentrated external heat. The sides of the opening looked melted; they also looked pushed out, as if exiting butane vapor under pressure had pushed them aside.

In a test room, we heated exemplar lighters in various ways. We were only able to duplicate the failure by heating the exemplars with a flame actually impinging the case. Gentle heating caused explosions that shattered the case into shrapnel. The suit was dropped soon after we produced our report.