Customer Sues Apple For $1 Million After Breaking Nose On Glass Door

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Both the front and rear of Apple's Manhasset store feature glass walls and doors.
Both the front and rear of Apple's Manhasset store feature glass walls and doors.

Apple is being sued by an 83-year-old lady who broke her nose on a glass door while visiting its retail store in Manhasset, New York. Evelyn Paswall wants $75,000 in medical expenses, in addition to punitive damages for negligence totaling $1 million.

CBS New York reports:

Paswall claims that she didn’t realize that she was walking into a wall of glass as she approached the store, and says that she broke her nose as a result of the collision.

Paswall’s attorney, Derek T. Smith, told the New York Post that Apple doesn’t appreciate the risks that this “high-tech” architecture poses when it tries to be “cool and modern”:

Apple wants to be cool and modern and have the type of architecture that would appeal to the tech crowd, but on the other hand, they have to appreciate the danger that this high-tech modern architecture poses to some people.

The lawsuit claims that Apple showed negligence by allowing a clear, transparent glass wall to exist without proper warning.

The Manhasset store does feature white warning strips along its glass walls and doors, but it’s unclear whether these were there at the time of the incident or whether they were installed as a result of it. MacRumors reports that all Apple Stores had white strips installed last January after a similar incident.

But whether they were there or not, Smith argues that they’re not enough:

“There were no markings on the glass or they were inadequate,” he said. “My client is an octogenarian. She sees well, but she did not see any glass.”

“The stereotypical Apple customer is a Gen-Y person or a teenager or a college student, but they have to realize that the elderly generation are their customers, too,” he added.

[via MacRumors]

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