Okay, using those default settings it renders okay for me too.  However, soon as I check the Cast Shadows box, I'm back to the wonky shadows.

With Cast Shadows unchecked, options like Raytracing, Smooth polygons, etc seem to work okay.  Just can't have shadows.

Now the $64 question is, why can't the Firefly engine render shadows properly with small objects?  A small object is really just a bunch of vertices close together (that's what makes the object small) so my guess is something happens when the geometry / polygons are scaled down beyond a certain point and Firefly can't properly figure out the shadows.   But why that is the case I've no idea.

I'd be curious to know what render settings Laurie normally uses, if she's using the default manual settings, that would explain why she never had this happen.

Good catch Les, another clue!