Apple sued over faulty power button on iPhone 4
Florida woman Debra Hilton filed a class action suit against Apple alleging that the power button on the iPhone 4 sports a manufacturing defect that Apple is well aware of and chose not to fix. The suit specifically claims that the iPhone 4's flex cable is defective and designed to cause the power button to malfunction shortly after the one-year warranty on the device expires, thereby forcing users to either get it repaired for US$149 or spring for an entirely new device.
The complaint reads in part:
The Apple iPhone 4 is plagued by a latent defect that causes its Power Button to fail, usually shortly after the 1 year warranty covering the device has expired, thereby rendering the phone unusable.
Apple knew when it manufactured, marketed, and sold the device that this defect existed, but failed to disclose it, instead touting the purported superior attributes of the telephone in Apple's various advertisements and marketing campaigns.
To support her claim that Apple was well aware of what she deems to be a problem affecting thousands of consumers, Hilton's suit points out that Apple's community support forum is filled with hundreds of complaints from users experiencing similar power button failure issues.
She further points out that said complaints have been viewed more than 720,000 times and that a YouTube video featuring solutions to fixing the iPhone 4's faulty power button have been viewed more than 1 million times.
The class action suit was filed under RICO (a federal Racketeering Act) and seeks $5 million in damages.
