Apple Sued By State Farm Over Alleged iPhone Fire (cnet.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday July 23, 2017 @09:18AM from the unlike-a-good-neighbor dept.

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.

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Not a surprise by Mr+D+from+63 · 2017-07-23 09:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.