Whose Fault Was It?

It has been a long summer. I counted at one point a stretch of 19 straight days that I was out "on the road" working in June. Not a lot of time for family, relaxation or tending to the basic things of life for certain, but life goes on nonetheless. Bills still have to get paid, kids to their summer "stuff," groceries bought, gas in the car...just a lot to do even as many think of summer as "vacation." Maybe this little story will help put things back in perspective, and give you a little relief from the summer heat.

We had a small water leak from our refrigerator this past week, when I was home for a few minutes between trips my wife noticed that the wood floors near the fridge had separated slightly and were bowed at the edges. I thought it was curious but did not give it much thought other than a cursory inspection, and went off to bed. The next day the situation was a bit more evident, the slight warping had moved outward to a few more boards, so we decided to investigate. Eager to avoid a trip under the house for a leak or some other source, I wanted to take a look at the only appliance with water involved that was in the vicinity-the fridge. Sure enough, as we pulled it out, we found a valve that transferred water to the ice maker was leaking, the leak was dripping down and running along the very slight cracks in the wood floor so it was not very conspicuous. I turned the water off to the fridge, but the damage had been done. The seeping water had warped several boards that would have to be sanded and repaired.

Over the next few days, the slightly warped floor issue was pretty much stabilized to about a 10 foot area, not really a huge deal but enough that you could feel it when you walked over it. I thought about calling the floor guy to have it sanded and repaired, but after looking at the floor and trying to decide where we would have to re-apply the coating to the entire floor to make it look correct again, I decided to take a shot at calling our insurance company to see if the homeowner's policy covered such things. Lo and behold it turns out that such damage is covered, and they would be sending a check for the damage after the estimator took a look at it. He made sure to tell us to keep the faulty part, because they would try and recover damages from the refrigerator manufacturer.

After he left, I started thinking about that. Whose fault was it? I guess the manufacturer made the thing, so they must be responsible, right? But I suppose that the story will not end there, because if you look inside the part you can see evidence of some calcium deposits. I feel sure the manufacturer has a case against the water softener people since the damage to the valve could have been caused by those deposits. The attorneys will no doubt have a meeting to discuss culpability and loss due to damage, you know, lawyer type stuff. The billing will probably reflect the legal opinion of several key attorneys whose experience will also be reflected in the cost of the consultation, after all, they have several years of school to pay for. After the meeting they will advise the manufacturer to hire an expert to examine the part and decide what went wrong. The expert will spend several hours at $100/hr or so, he may have to consult with a design engineer who will undoubtedly notice that the part has a "Made in China" sticker on it, concluding that the part was outsourced by the manufacturer to a Chinese company that was undoubtedly at fault, because they should know that we Americans like our ice convenient and properly softened. That's it, it was their fault, case closed. Estimated cost is approximately 5 refrigerators and 2 new wood floors, to be recovered by increasing my homeowner's policy slowly over the next 10 years, and including a percentage to be amortized by everyone in my nearest zip code.

What really needs to happen is that we develop a government committee to examine the costs of the production, sales and shipping of that part to the American manufacturer, then establish the costs of a flight and $1/hr labor for an underage Chinese worker to come over here and sand my floors smooth and re-clear them. That has to be cheaper than the whole process as it exists now, and could lead to better relations with the Chinese on a cultural level. The only person that would be out anything is my floor guy, but he got paid once to put the floor in the first time so he should be OK. The guest worker could then apply for citizenship while they were here, or just defect and request asylum due to the intense political pressure of the job. The cost of getting them here is already absorbed but the government committee's budget paid for by our taxes, so they can be a productive member of society almost immediately.

So there you have it, a reasonable solution to the water leak issue and the blame properly placed on the manufacturer of the fridge, the water softener company and eventually the real culprit, the Chinese company that made the thing without considering American tastes in the first place. I'll just keep making my homeowner's policy payment in the meantime until they sort that all out, in the end figuring I don't deserve to cash the insurance check because if I was still using those old plastic ice trays instead of expecting my ice to appear out of the front of my refrigerator door, this would never have happened in the first place...