Waukesha County jury orders $3B in punitive damages

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A Waukesha County jury awarded a Brookfield couple more than $3 billion in punitive damages after a defective dehumidifier caused a fire in their home.

Chinese manufacturer Gree Electric Appliances, Inc. of Zhuhai, the defendant in the case, knowingly manufactured and sold defective dehumidifiers that caused fires. It hid the information for 13 years — it only came out one month after the plaintiffs Robert and Patricia Hutton filed the product liability lawsuit in 2023.

The Huttons’ fire happened on Sept. 30, 2020. Their attorney, Ron Harmeyer of Ron Harmeyer Law Office LLC, said the defective dehumidifiers previously caused other fires and even deaths but did not announce a full recall until 2023 when the Huttons filed their lawsuit.

Harmeyer said Gree faced a criminal investigation and a deferred prosecution in 2021 but they still did not recall their humidifiers. He incorporated that information as part of his complaint.

When Gree first began manufacturing the dehumidifiers in 2010, they realized fires could happen. Engineers designed a $1 part to fix the problem but the manufacturer declined to add it to dehumidifier.

When considering the punitive damages, the jury took the company’s profits of 2020 (the year of the Huttons’ fire) and added $1 for each dehumidifier sold, which would have been what it cost of adding the piece that would fixed the problem of causing a fire. Adding those two numbers together brought the jury to the $3,461,560,000 total.

In addition to the punitive damages, the jury in Judge Zach Wittchow’s courtroom awarded the Huttons $659,927 in property damages for their home.

The plaintiffs were represented by Ron Harmeyer and Hillary Nester of Ron Harmeyer Law Office LLC in Milwaukee while the defendant was represented by Joseph Rivera of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani in New York City.

Plaintiff’s experts:

Derek Starr and Carolyn Kelly