Debra Hilton of St. Augustine, Fla., is suing Apple, claiming they have a knowingly defective device in the iPhone 4. What's more, the suit asserts that Apple deliberately makes their iPhone so that one of the five moving parts on the phone goes bad after the 1-year warranty expires.
CNN offers some background:
Woman buys an iPhone 4. Fifteen months later the power button stops working. She calls AT&T (T). They send her to Apple (AAPL). She works her way up and down the customer service chain and gets tough love at every turn: Her warranty expired three months ago. She has two choices. Pay for repair ($149.99 plus shipping) or buy new phone.<br/><br/>She goes to the Internet. Finds a thread on Apple's community support site with hundreds of complaints about the same power button. It's been viewed 720,525 times. Finds YouTube video with workarounds viewed more than million times. Finds iFixit instructions for replacing the power button's faulty flex cord that includes a Step 29 rated "difficult."<br/><br/>Adopting the consensus view that the iPhone 4's power button problem is a known manufacturing defect, and buying into the tin-foil-hat theory that it's carefully planned obsolescence -- a part designed to go bad right after the 1-year warranty expires -- she files a class action suit under RICO (the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) for $5 million plus.
You can read her lawsuit here.
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