During the post-fire investigation that followed the fire, two deputies from the Office of the Maryland State Fire Marshal and a private fire investigator hired by Plaintiff's insurance company concluded that the fire began in an electrical outlet located on her basement wall. The investigators discovered an unidentifiable molten chunk of plastic lying beneath the outlet, which Plaintiff claimed to be a Glade plug-in air freshener. Upon that information, and having eliminated other potential sources of the fire, the investigators concluded that the air freshener must have overheated, causing its scented oil to ignite. Plaintiff filed her products liability actions against SC Johnson shortly thereafter. SC Johnson responded with a Motion for Summary Judgment.

In granting this motion, the trial court sought to determine whether Plaintiff had provided enough circumstantial evidence to raise the inference of a defect in the product. In answering this question, the District Court noted that although Plaintiff's experts determined that the air freshener caused the fire, their opinions were based on their elimination of other potential causes of the fire, not on a thorough examination of the product itself. In fact, both experts admitted that they were not qualified to test the product for possible design or manufacturing defects. As such, the court determined that the expert opinions did not rise above that of mere conjecture or speculation.

Moreover, the court noted that the plaintiff failed to present evidence that tended to show that the air freshener in question was of the type that had overheated on prior occasions (i.e., no notice to SC Johnson). In addition, the plaintiff also failed to show that the accident was of the type that does not happen without a defect. The court determined that a proper analysis as to this question began with a discussion of whether a fire could occur in an electrical outlet that contained a perfectly functioning plug-in air freshener (i.e., one that does not have a defect). Finding that Plaintiff had failed to prove that a defect in the air freshener was a necessary precondition to the fire, the court noted that other hazards that could have started a fire, namely faulty wiring. SC Johnson's Motion for Summary Judgment was granted.

In this case, the court refused to allow a products liability claim to reach the jury in the absence of sufficient circumstantial evidence that tended to show that the product in question was defective. Without qualified experts who could speak to the existence of possible defects, evidence of prior similar incidents, notice of a defect by Defendants, or facts that demonstrated that the electrical outlet could not catch fire in the absence of a defect, the only logical inference to draw was that the air freshener was defective simply because a fire occurred. This process of elimination, the court made clear, cannot support an opinion as to causation. Uses premised on this theory will not withstand summary judgment.