Posted on 01/29/2011 11:19:26 PM PST by Swordmaker
A California man became so angry after his daughter dropped his iPhone 4 and cracked its glass enclosure that he filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple alleging that its most recent handset design is defective.
In the complaint filed earlier this week, Los Angeles resident Donald LeBuhn claims that Apple has known for months that its industrial design of the iPhone 4 is defective but has failed to warn customers that normal use of the device can lead to a broken phone.
More specifically, LeBuhn said that he paid over $250 in September for a new iPhone 4 only to have it rendered essentially useless after his daughter dropped it from a height of roughly three feet while attempting to send a text message.
In the suit, he claims to have owned an iPhone 3GS that fell from a similar height but did not break. As such, he's calling bologna on the Cupertino-based company's marketing claims that the iPhone 4 glass as "20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic," and is "ultradurable" having been made from the same material as the "glass used in helicopters and high-speed trains."
"Months after selling millions of iPhone 4s, Apple has failed to warn and continues to sell this product with no warning to customers that the glass housing is defective," LeBuhn's attorneys wrote in the complaint.
The suit comes a little over three months after third-party warranty provider SquareTrade issued a report stating that in its first four months on market, the iPhone 4 was seeing a reported accident rate that was 68% higher than the iPhone 3GS, primarily the result of broken screens.
A followup report from the same firm a month later claimed that while the iPhone 4 outperformed all other leading smartphones when it came to reported malfunctions, it also appeared to be more accident-prone. As such, SquareTrade projected the handset would have the highest accidental damage rate after 12 months of all smartphones at roughly 13.8 percent, possibly due to its two sides of glass.
With his lawsuit this month, LeBuhn has asked the court to mandate that Apple refund the purchase price of the iPhone 4 to all similarly situated class members, to reimburse customers for any repair fees they've paid, and to further compensate customers for their "overpayment" in purchasing a defective product.
Ditto. Love my iphone, At work, i run a PC, But my laptop is a Mac. : )
I presume broken glass isn’t covered under the warranty, what does Apple charge to replace the glass?
Posilutely. Too many things add up here . . .
- Fall from 3 feet while texting? That would make little princess around what -- 9 years old or so? (It's doubtful it would fall from a table top, so princess was probably standing with the phone around chest level. Also -- "while attempting to text" -- not "while texting". Teens don't "attempt" to text. They just do it.)
Also (and the big tell in the story) -- CALIFORNIA!
Yup -- tort lawyer filling in some unbilled time with a hobby suit.
Thing is -- if it settles, only the lawyers will get anything worthwhile from it.
Every other party will probably just get a coupon.
Because plastic cannot match the quality glass provides in displaying an ultra-high pixel density screen.
It's three years old now can I still sue. ;8^)
ED
I was constantly having to clean my iPhone 3G’s screen with a microfiber cloth. The iPhone 4’s glass is much easier to keep clean without using a special cloth. I’m also careful not do drop it or to use my blow dryer in the shower. /s
You have me considering purchasing this phone because of the glass. I choose eyeglasses with glass instead of plastic lenses for pretty much the reasons you describe, so it makes sense. Maybe all the phone needs is a warning printed permanently on it saying that the glass just might break if the phone drops. I don't think anyone would not buy the phone for that. Even if they would, there must be a way for Apple to substitute in plastic for a small fee.
Every mobile phone I’ve ever owned ended its service life with a number of dents or chips. But they all died from natural causes, not from the trauma.
My Samsung has a cracked PLASTIC lens from being dropped a couple (dozen?) times. I wonder if I can get in on a CA suit. I never cease to marvel at how durable cell phones are considering the cost. Chill Penury has kept me out of an iphone, that and a lack of use and desire.
Crikey! No one explained the "gravity thingy" to me, get me a lawyer!
If any persons think this is right I hope you also enjoy the increasing cost of goods and services to cover such types of frivolous lawsuits.
It is a phone, if you drop it you should expect it to break, some will, some won’t.
This guy is just another kalifornia nut job.
A friend of mine showed me his new phone (I think it was a Samsung running Android) that had a screen made out of “gorilla glass”. He took his car keys and repeatedly slammed them into his screen, hard enough to break a normal plastic or glass phone. Not only didn’t it break, it didn’t even make the slightest scratch. He said he did that regularly as a bar trick. That would have been a good screen to use on the iPhone (assuming it could achieve the same resolution, etc., and I admit I have no idea if that’s possible).
Anything can be broken or scratched... But this glassCorning Gorilla Glasshas a Young's modulus close to that of Aluminum! It's hardly your everyday standard window glass. . . and it's highly resistant to scratching, 20 times more so than plastic.
So, no, they can't be that stupid, they aren't.
I never said it was window glass. But if it's broken by a 3ft fall it's not very crack resistant and I don't care what it's made of.
The iPhone4 pioneered the use of Corning Gorilla Glass on smart phones but not on cellular phones themselves as there was a plain Jane cell phone (very expensive) with a titanium case with a Gorilla Glass screen that sold for over $600 that predated the GG iPhone. Funny thing was that the cell phone maker was demoing that phone by using it to hammer nails with at a European Consumer Electronics Show and during an interview at the show about the phone, a British TV reporter used it to drive a nail on their demo set-up and broke the phone's screen on live TV. There's a YouTube of that event around.
If you can believe the plaintiff in this lawsuit.... anything can be broken if enough force is brought to bear. And anything can be fixed. In this instance, the iPhone4 would still be under it's one year warranty and would be repaired or replaced. I know of people who have had cracked or shattered screens or back glass and gotten them repaired or replaced with no questions asked. Is a broken product sufficient to trigger a class action lawsuit? I would think not, except for a greedy plaintiff and lawyer in a litigious society.
The iPhone4 has the lowest rate of return for all reasons of all smart phones at just 2.4% according to companies who insure cellphones for repairs and damage.
And that’s not even the one I saw being broken... Funny. That phone guy was pretty cool about his phone getting broken, though!
Just shows that no matter how well engineered, and how confident the engineers are about how unbreakable their product is, someone will find a way to break it. I call it “The Unsinkable Titanic Principle,” or more simply, the “Don’t Challenge Murphy Law.”
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