CliveS:

If someone fits a smart meter and jogs the leads into the consumer unit which then has a loose contact; who will pay for the fire damage?

145.It follows from the above that the Claimants’ Claims must be dismissed and there will be judgment for the Defendants in each of the five sets of proceedings. Although limited breaches of duty have been established, it has not been established to anywhere near the requisite standard of proof that such breaches caused fires in any of the cases .
Counsel for the Defendants reminded me, properly, that these five cases have not been in the nature of a public enquiry. In a public enquiry, the tribunal might well have called for much more and different evidence to that which was deployed. A Court can usually only base its decision on the case as put in the pleadings and on the evidence which is actually deployed in front of it. It may be however that the electrical distribution and supply industries may feel, at least in respect of the findings in this case, that they need actively to consider what the impact of ageing generations of cut-outs will be as time marches on.

Zoomup:

But, do not forget that there might be lots of sub-standard cable cooking and smouldering in people's homes installed years ago........

Simon Barker:

You could measure the diameter of the cable using vernier callipers.  From that calculate the cross-sectional area, and see if it's what it is supposed to be.

mapj1:

The person whose insurance has the weaker legal team will pay, naturally.

This legal judgment  shows that a DNO don't even pay up when it is clearly their ancient and un-inspected cut outs that catch fire, as with enough convoluted arguing , it becomes  the householder's problem (and even after this case it still is, though the judge is clearly uneasy that the defence  (DNO ) arguments are such he cannot hold the DNO to task - as per his concluding sentence. I get the feeling that unsaid is a 'but hang on a minute, ...' )