Have you ever broken your iPhone 4 or 4S’s glass? Felt that it was Steve Jobs’s fault for sucking you into his reality distortion field and convincing you that the iPhone 4’s glass was thirty times harder than plastic? Angry enough to want to try to sue?
Tough. A San Jose federal judge has just thrown out a class action lawsuit over the strength of the glass in the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.
The lawsuit was filed by Californian Betsalel Williamson, who had the unlucky turn of breaking his iPhone’s back glass panel after knocking it off of the arm of a chair.
According to Williamson, Apple’s ads claimed the glass were “20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic . . . ultradurable and more scratch resistant than ever” which clearly couldn’t be true if such a small accident had broken his iPhone, when the same thing wouldn’t have even dinged his plastic-backed iPhon 3GS.
According to Williamson, the iPhone 4’s glass was a scam, used to extort iPhone owners into paying to replace cracked screens and back panels.
Federal Judge Edward Davilla didn’t agree, claiming that Steve Jobs’s claims about the glass were “mere puffery” and insinuating that only idiots wouldn’t arm their iPhones with a case.
A “reasonable consumer” viewing a commercial showing the iPhone 4 in use as a phone, but without a cover, would not be misled to believe that the iPhone 4 could withstand any particular level of impact if the phone was dropped.
Davilla did say that he would allow the plaintiff to amend his class action lawsuit if he cold show more specifically how Apple had deceived consumers, but otherwise, the ruling was fairly clear cut: smartphones break, that’s why you buy a case.
Source: GigaOM
