On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:30:06 +0100, Mark Goodge
wrote:

If the
customer doesn't believe that the supplier is telling the truth, then
the ultimate recourse is to the courts. At that point, it is (in
circumstances such as this, where the item is less than six months
old), the responsibility of the supplier to demonstrate that the item
was not faulty when supplied, not for the customer to demonstrate that
it was.

The supplier does not have to prove the item wasn't faulty when
supplied. They have a defence of showing that the application of
48A(3) (the reverse burden of proof) is incompatible with the nature
of the lack of conformity.

If you took your phone in for repair after the passage of a
steamroller over it the retailer would find it impossible to prove it
conformed with the contract at the time of sale. They would, I
suggest, find it very easy to demonstrate on balance of probability
that the steamroller was the most likely cause of any subsequent lack
of conformity and therefore S48(4)b applies and they have no
liability for the failure.

Similarly in this case - the retailer can show objective evidence
that the internal electronics were in contact with liquid and that
this is usually fatal. Any lack of conformity is more likely to be
the result of exposure to that liquid than anything else and
therefore the same defence exists.

--
Peter Parry
Hemel Hempstead