Apple Is Facing Two Potential Lawsuits In Canada Over “BatteryGate”

Adding to the 18 23 lawsuits that I’ve noted since “BatteryGate” started, comes two law firms in the province of Quebec who are looking to file a pair of class action lawsuits against Apple:

Apple’s acknowledgment of the battery issue along with the price of Apple products, is evidence that the company is violating Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act, said Joey Zukran, a lawyer at LPC Avocats, which filed the application for authorization along with Renno Vathilakis Avocats.

Zukran stated that “There’s something wrong with this. The law is very clear on this point, especially on electronic devices, that the manufacturer of the product … has to guarantee the product for a reasonable amount of time.”

Currently, purchasers of Apple products receive a one-year limited warranty while they’re able to purchase an AppleCare extended warranty. According to Zukran, that’s not enough.

Under Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act, goods “must be durable in normal use for a reasonable length of time, having regard to their price, the terms of the contract and the conditions of their use.”

In the filing the law firm noted that “Considering the high prices paid by Class Members for Apple products, in normal use Apple products are not durable for a reasonable length of time.”

The law firm noted that it would also be seeking punitive damages of $300 per class member and it would ask the court to declare that a reasonable amount of time for Apple products to last would be six years.

Now I am a computer nerd, not a lawyer, but what they want from the courts sounds like a bit of a stretch to me. But these day, anything can happen. So we’d have to watch and see where this goes. It will be interesting to see if (a) this gets the go ahead from the courts to be filed as a class action, and (b) if these guys actually come out on top somehow.

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