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Apple has been the subject of a lawsuit claiming that every Apple Watch model ever made has a “dangerous flaw” – specifically, the fact that the device lacks the internal space to accommodate a bloated battery.
The class action lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in California, claims the Apple Watch poses an “undisclosed and unreasonably dangerous security risk.” The lawsuit names each model produced, from the original Apple Watch to the Apple Watch Series 6.
Specifically, the lawsuit calls the Apple Watch’s alleged lack of “thermal or other solutions to prevent and/or mitigate the danger of a detached, broken, or cracked watch screen resulting from insufficient space allotted in the device for the electromagnetically charged rectangular-shaped lithium-cobalt oxide battery.”
The lawsuit claims that the lack of space can cause problems if the battery suddenly swells. Such a scenario could put upward pressure on the display, causing it to detach from the Apple Watch, break or crack – “exposing its razor-sharp edges” to users.
In other words, the manufacturing defect is not the fact that lithium-ion batteries could swell. Instead, the lawsuit disputes that there isn’t enough space in the device, or some other mitigation mechanism, to protect against battery swelling. An example he gives is a “protective guard to keep [the battery] to come into contact with the face of the screen.”
“Detached, broken or cracked screens constitute a material and unreasonably dangerous hazard,” the complaint states.
More than that, the lawsuit claims that Apple knowingly produced Apple Watch models with this security detection. She adds that the company denies its existence.
The lawsuit names a handful of plaintiffs who had battery swelling issues on their Apple Watch models. He is seeking class action status.
The suit, which demands a jury trial, seeks damages for plaintiffs and class members, as well as disclosure of the “defective nature of the watch,” among other prayers for relief.
It’s unclear how the case will work around over two decades of precedent involving batteries, and how they swell inside a mobile device case when operated outside of normal parameters when charged. damaged or chemically exhausted. Similar cases have been filed regarding iPhone batteries in the past, and none have ended in favor of the filer.
