Key Points

  • The South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously held that due process permits South Carolina courts to exercise specific personal jurisdiction over LG Chem in a suit by a vaper burned by an exploding 18650 lithium-ion battery.
  • The court rejected LG's argument that the plaintiff had not shown 18650 sales in the state, noting LG never denied serving the South Carolina 18650 market and that factual disputes are resolved for the plaintiff at the pleading stage.
  • Relying on Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, the court held that LG could not escape jurisdiction by arguing the injury came from an unintended use of batteries sold only in packs to commercial customers.
  • The court declined to follow the Seventh Circuit's intended-market approach in B.D. ex rel. Myers v. Samsung SDI Co., also followed by the Fifth Circuit and Nevada Supreme Court, calling it too formalistic.
  • Alternatively, the court held the plaintiff made a prima facie showing that LG knew its batteries were sold individually in South Carolina for vaping and kept supplying that market.

The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Thursday that LG Chem Ltd. can be sued in the state by a man who says an LG lithium-ion battery exploded in his vape pen and burned him. The ruling rejects a test that the Seventh and Fifth circuits and Nevada's top court have used to turn away similar suits against battery makers.

Justice Hill, writing for a unanimous court, reversed a Charleston County circuit judge and the state Court of Appeals. Both had concluded that South Carolina courts lacked personal jurisdiction over the South Korean company. Chief Justice Kittredge, Justices James and Verdin, and Acting Justice Daniel Dewitt Hall joined the opinion.

The decision holds that a manufacturer serving a state's market cannot avoid that state's courts by arguing that its batteries reached consumers only after middlemen broke apart packs sold to commercial customers. The court acknowledged that other courts have divided on similar jurisdictional arguments by LG and other battery makers.

Reid Fleming, an Anderson resident, alleges he bought the battery from The Planet Vape LLC in Charleston and was injured there. His complaint alleges LG knows its commercial customers rewrap its batteries and resell them for individual use, yet has done "virtually nothing to prevent its lithium-ion battery products from being sold individually throughout the United States and, specifically, in South Carolina." The complaint also listed five pending South Carolina cases in which circuit courts had exercised jurisdiction over LG in similar vape-battery suits.

The appeal turned on specific jurisdiction, which lets a court hear a claim against an out-of-state defendant when the claim is connected to the defendant's activity in the state. LG conceded that it does business in South Carolina but argued that Fleming's injury did not "arise out of or relate to" those contacts.

LG first argued that Fleming had not shown it sold 18650 batteries in South Carolina. Hill wrote that the argument "suffers from the fatal logical fallacy known as an appeal to ignorance." "Nowhere does LG deny that it serves the South Carolina market with lithium-ion batteries, and nowhere does it deny that this includes the 18650 type," he wrote.

LG's second argument rested on an affidavit stating that it sells 18650 batteries only in packs to commercial customers for use as component parts, never to individual consumers. In LG's view, Fleming was hurt by the conduct of third parties who broke open the packs and sold single cells. Hill wrote that this theory rests on a causation requirement the U.S. Supreme Court rejected in 2021 in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, where the justices said "[n]one of our precedents has suggested that only a strict causal relationship between the defendant's in-state activity and the litigation will do."

Ford held that jurisdiction may be proper when a company "serves a market for a product in the forum state and the product malfunctions there." Hill wrote that the statement "was not limited to or conditioned upon whether the injury was caused by the intended use of the product."

He illustrated the point with a battery pack exploding in a delivery truck in South Carolina and injuring the driver and bystanders, none of them intended users. "A non-resident defendant who has raked in profits by exploiting a state's business market with a product may not escape jurisdiction by claiming the injury arose out of the unintended use of the product or caused damage to someone other than an intended user," Hill wrote. "Such a jurisdictional rule would be as artificial as it is unprecedented and unfair."

In 2023, the Texas Supreme Court held that LG's contacts with Texas were enough for jurisdiction and the Sixth Circuit held that a Michigan federal court had jurisdiction over LG, while the Ninth Circuit that year found a plaintiff had not carried his burden against LG in Hawaii. In 2025, the Seventh Circuit held in B.D. ex rel. Myers v. Samsung SDI Co. that Indiana could not exercise jurisdiction over Samsung after an 18650 battery exploded in an Indiana resident's pocket. The Fifth Circuit and the Nevada Supreme Court followed that approach.

The Seventh Circuit divided the stream of commerce into an "end-product" stream of packs sold to commercial customers and a "derivative-product" stream of single batteries resold by third parties. Because the plaintiff was injured by the derivative product, it held, his claim was unrelated to Samsung's Indiana contacts.

"With much respect, we find this separatist approach—or intended market approach—too formalistic," Hill wrote. "Perhaps courts could, with their visible pens, sort what the invisible hand has unsorted in the marketplace. But such an effort would remove adjudication from the reality of economic markets." He called the test "just another way to impose a strict causation requirement on the specific jurisdiction test."

The court added that the test would not help LG anyway. It held that Fleming had made a prima facie showing that LG placed batteries in commerce knowing they would be sold individually in South Carolina, and that LG knew those sales had caused injuries and repeated lawsuits in the state. "We are far removed from the situation where the stream of commerce, aided by the efforts of third parties, has swept the non-resident defendant's product into a forum without the defendant's knowledge or design," Hill wrote.

On fairness, the final requirement, the court said LG benefits from South Carolina's laws and bears a reciprocal obligation to follow its safety rules. Letting LG evade jurisdiction, Hill wrote, would allow it to sell goods in the state "without complying with the same safety laws and regulations that other companies doing business here must honor."

The ruling reverses the dismissal of Fleming's claim against LG ordered by Circuit Judge Roger M. Young, Sr. and affirmed by the Court of Appeals in 2025 over a dissent by Judge Hewitt. The decision addresses only jurisdiction at the pleading stage, not whether LG is liable for Fleming's injuries.

Fleming was represented by John Preston Griffith of Smith & Griffith LLP. LG was represented by C. Mitchell Brown of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP.