Exploding iPod Touch lands Apple in court
So there you are, a student sitting in class in middle school, when that iPod Touch that you begged your parents to get you spontaneously combusts in your pants pocket.
That’s what happened to an Ohio student not long ago. According to his mother, who has filed a lawsuit on behalf of her son, a fifteen-year-old middle school student, the iPod in question caught fire with explosive force while her son was just sitting in class paying attention to the teacher. It did so with such force that the student leapt up, ran for the closest school rest room, and hastily removed his scorched pants. Having done so, he discovered that the explosive iPod had burned a hole through the pocket in which it was stored at the time of the incident as well as through his underwear, coming to rest against his leg, which it also tried to fry.
The lawsuit filed by the lawyers of the boy’s mother claim, in fact, that the middle schooler received second-degree burns to his leg. Further, the lawsuit claims that the boy was a victim to “physical and mental conditions which will cause him to suffer pain, mental distress, emotional distress, and otherwise for the rest of his life.” Just to make sure that the suit covers all the bases, the lawyers named not only Apple as a corporate entity, but also named the the ten workers that were present at the Apple Store at the time that the iPod Touch was purchased. This is believed to be the first incident in which an iPod Touch is known to have caught fire, according to an ipodnn article, although several iPod Nano models have caught fire in the past.
Usually, these sorts of cases are settled out of court, although cases involving Dell, Sony, and Apple laptop batteries have been know to go to court. Should this case go to trial, the mother is said to be seeking $75,000 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages, plus another $75,000, asked for as payment for legal fees and “special damages.” Most cases like this one, of course, are settled outside the courtroom by manufacturers hoping to keep payments and bad publicity to a minimum. At the very least, Apple should buy the victim a new pair of pants.
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