A-ha! We knew something was amiss! Remember a couple of weeks ago when we told you that Apple was being sued by Princeton's insurance company because of a fire that lightly toasted (and, more the point, gently destroyed) $2 million worth of genetic lab equipment? The Royal and Sun Alliance Insurance Company had to cough up that much cash to Princeton to cover the damages, and then sued Apple to recoup its payout. Why Apple? Because according to Royal and Sun Alliance, the fire department had determined the cause of the fire to be "an Apple Power Mac G4 plugged into an electrical receptacle box."

Turns out, though, it was all a pack of lies. Filthy lies. Faithful viewer Steve Tomaszewski tipped us off to a detailed debunking of Royal and Sun's claim, which includes scans of the actual reports filed by the Borough of Princeton Fire Department and the fire inspector who investigated the scene. In the blank marked "Equipment Involved in Ignition" the fire department has listed "Outlet, receptacle" and further designates the equipment as "Stationary," whereas a Power Mac G4 "normally can be moved by one person, is designed to be used in multiple locations, and requires no tools to install" and would therefore be classified as "Portable." Maybe not in a PowerBook sense of the word, sure, but given that people are using PowerBooks to fry bacon, it's probably good that a PowerBook wasn't present at the blaze, because it'd have been far more incriminating.

Meanwhile, the fire inspector's conclusion clearly blames the fire on the "electrical receptacle box" itself and makes no mention of a Power Mac, but apparently because a Power Mac happened to be plugged into the outlet when the box went foom, the insurance company figures that the fire was Apple's fault. Perhaps this is standard procedure in the insurance world: if a fire is caused by a faulty outlet, always sue the maker of whatever's plugged into said outlet at the time. The fire happened in December, so Santa must be heaving a sigh of relief that the lab folks had plugged their Christmas tree in on the other side of the room, or else he'd be mobilizing the Legal Elves.

If you ask us, Apple should countersue Royal and Sun for libel, because far from burning down bio labs all across the world, its G4s were notoriously fire-resistant little beasts. In fact, just last week faithful viewer eric-jan jong forwarded us this picture of an obvious fire survivor apparently functioning just fine. (Warning: even though the Mac seems to be working okay, it's still a pretty grisly sight and may not be appropriate for younger and more sensitive viewers.) Why, we've even got one report of a G4 that smelled smoke in the middle of the night, alerted a family of five to the blaze, and even personally rescued the three-year-old daughter and the family cat who were trapped by flames upstairs.

Well, okay, no, we don't. But we still hope that Royal and Sun gets what's coming to it; if Apple won't countersue, given the frivolous nature of the lawsuit, at the very least we hope that the judge sticks it with Apple's court costs. Jerks.