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Apple Sued By State Farm Over Alleged iPhone Fire (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNET:
Insurer State Farm and one of its customers, Wisconsin resident Xai Thao, allege that one of Apple's older iPhones had a defective battery that led to a fire last year. A lawsuit filed on Thursday by both State Farm and Thao claims that her iPhone 4S "failed" and "started a fire at Thao's home." The lawsuit further claims that "preliminary investigations show evidence of a significant and localized heating event in the battery area of the iPhone." It also declares that there were "remnants of internal shorting, indicating that an internal failure of the iPhone's battery caused the fire"... The State Farm lawsuit says that Thao's iPhone was "in a defective and unreasonably dangerous condition" when she bought it in 2014. The suit is claiming in excess of $75,000 in damages.
Any manufacturer of devices with Lithium Ion batteries runs a risk of an occasional failure sparking a fire. Its not negligence, they implement all kinds of quality controls and features to prevent fires, but they are going to happen. Might be best for Apple to just pay up and not make much noise about it, as it is a rare event overall.
would not be surprised if it ends up being discovered that...
the phone had a cheap knockoff battery installed a previous owner of the phone. an iphone that old, used regularly, would have needed a new battery long before the 'incident'; and/or the current owner and co-plaintiff was using a cheap knockoff charger.
Yeah, it's nothing, except a legal precedent that has an insurance company yet again trying to pass the buck instead of actually paying out against the billions in premiums they collect to never actually pay against a policy.
Fuck that. State Farm can pay, and Apple should fight it even if it was for $20.
A lot of people posting here need to look up Subrogation and learn something about what State Farm is doing.
They paid out and are now looking to recover their payment, this is something they are allowed to do and is normal under the law.
http://www.dmv.org/insurance/s...
The policy holder is part of the suit because your insurance company requires it. If you have insurance and it pays you on a claim, you are agreeing to help sue anyone they want to go after to recover the money.
Sorry, but no.
When I design electronics I have to take fire hazard into consideration.
I know that despite how many signs I put up some nitwit will connect 230VAC to a device made for 24VDC.
It doesn't have to work then, it is OK if the smoke is let out, but under no circumstance is is acceptable that it causes a fire.
Yes, it is harder to solve the mechanical part and it will cut into profit margins, but the phone should have a PTC-resistor to detect if the battery is overheating and stop charging and shut down the phone. (You shouldn't even use the battery if it overheats.)
No, it isn't user friendly to display a black screen instead of a faulty battery symbol, but people lives are more important than their convenience.
Apple consistently makes design choices where appearance takes precedence over other things.
Same problem with their official charger. To get down the size they reduced the distance between the top of the mains capacitor to the USB shield to something like 2 mm where it should have been at least 6 mm.
Sure, the charger is smaller, but whoever made the decision should end up in jail.
But hey, they are winning, companies that follows the rules can't compete.