Sony's battery blues

Sony's woes continue with IBM and Lenovo battery issues. Sony is picking up the tab. In looking at the story over time, going back to the beginning as it were, it's interesting to see how the issue of exploding/overheating/short circuiting batteries has developed. I think Dell was first cab off the rank and it got a lot of attention on both old and new media. I think we all saw that Dell laptop catch fire, didn't we? I know that I thought dark thoughts at the time about Dell and their knife-edge margins (sorry, but I did) however the issue subsequently became one of 'pin the blame on the battery' as other laptop makers joined the fray as well. Eventually Sony admitted it had a problem and has made all the right moves to recall and replace. Perhaps Dell could have doused the flames earlier, but did it actually know what the issue was? I imagine that the manufacturers were 'waiting and seeing' who would get the bad publicity first, hoping it was someone else - but I could be wrong. They could all have moved first and got in there before the literal blaze of stories, if indeed they had detected an issue. I assume they had seen it smouldering in the repair stats for a while. Anyone know for sure?