Amazon to be sued for £25m after hoverboard explodes and burns a family's house down

A family from Tennessee is taking out a £25m lawsuit against retail giant Amazon after a hoverboard burst into flames and burnt their house down nearly killing two of their children.

Brian Fox caught his daughter in his arms as she leapt for her life from the burning flames from one of the upstairs windows of their $1m (£800,000) home in January. He then helped his son escape from another window by using a ladder. Luckily both children had only minor injuries.

He is now suing Amazon and other subsidiary firms for knowingly selling the faulty Christmas toy from China. The lawsuit was filed on 26 October at the Davidson County Circuit Court.

"The Foxes contend that Amazon and its various subsidiaries had information about the danger of this product well in advance of the January 9 fire, and on top of that, they had notice, they should have known the produce was being misrepresented on their website," said Steve Anderson, of the Nashville law firm Anderson & Reynolds PLC, according to a report in USA Today.

He continued: "The most horrific thing was obviously the episode that day and trying to rescue these two teenagers, and the profound impact on them. It's also important to consider that literally in a matter of a few minutes every single personal possession of this entire family was destroyed. The only things that remained were their vehicles and handful of books and pictures they were able to find that had water damage they were able to dry out. In the blink of an eye it was all gone.

"We've spent months investigating it and to this day I don't know who manufactured this product, and it doesn't appear that Amazon does."

Amazon does not comment on forthcoming cases but following the incident, it banned the sale of some hoverboards.