iPhone 3G Defects Lead to Lawsuit
Monday, September 29th, 2008Just yesterday, plaintiff Jai Sen filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York. The lawsuit cites well-known consumer issues related to the iPhone 3G including AT&T network reliability issues and hairline cracks in the plastic case, both of which have been blog fodder since the iPhone 3G was launched. The lawsuit also notes the power draw of the iPhone 3G is more than AT&T’s 3G network can handle. Additionally, the plaintiff is hoping that the filing will reach class-action status.
This one will be interesting to watch. There have been so many complaints, starting from the initial release of the iPhone 3G, and those complaints are alive and well, despite multiple firmware updates.
That said, this one will be a hard one to prove. The burden is on Jai Sen to prove that Apple and/or AT&T deliberately misled customers. Hopefully the media coverage of the complaints in this lawsuit will at the very least force Apple to address the issues through new customer service policies.
Its also worth noting that the lawsuit also says that the plaintiff “has suffered injury in fact due to Apple’s defective housing used for the iphones resulting in the formation of hairline cracks in the Plantiff’s iPhone.”
What the plaintiff could have been doing with the iPhone to cause injury is a bit curious, and we prefer not to speculate; however, this hurts the validity of the whole complaint, so unless some legal magic happens, this lawsuit might not get very far.