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APPLE NEWS
APPLE HIT WITH CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT OVER
BUTTERFLY KEYBOARD DEFECT
BY TROY THOMPSON
Magnuson-Moss Warranty
Act and the Song-Beverly
Consumer Warranty Act.
Plaintiffs in the suit are
demanding a jury trial, seeking
punitive damages from
Apple in an amount to be
determined in court.
The suit is also seeking a
public disclosure from Apple
on the defect, along with
reimbursement of all costs
absorbed by customers in
their bid to remedy or rectify
their defective MacBook or
MacBook Pro keyboards.
Apple this week was hit with
a class-action lawsuit over
the highly-publicized Butterfly
Keyboard defect, which
has been discovered to be
affecting a growing number
of recent MacBook and
MacBook Pro models.
Filed with the U.S. District
Court in Northern California,
the lawsuit alleges that
Apple's redesigned butterfly
switch keyboard (employed
on 2015-or-later MacBooks
and 2016-or-later MacBook
Pro models) is "prone to fail,"
which could result in the
possibility of "non-responsive
keys" and other issues.
According to the official
complaint filed by Girard
Gibbs LLP on behalf of
MacBook Pro owners Zixuan
Rao and Kyle Barbaro,
"Apple's butterfly keyboard
and MacBook are produced
and assembled in such a way
that when minimal amounts
of dust or debris accumulate
under or around a key,
keystrokes fail to register."
"As a result of the defect
consumers who purchased
a MacBook face a constant
threat of non-responsive keys
and accompanying keyboard
failure. When one or more
of the keys on the keyboard
fail, the MacBook can no
longer serve its core function:
typing."
The lawsuit goes on to allege
that "thousands of consumers
have experienced this defect"
so far, cites numerous Apple
Support threads related to
the issue, as well as a recent
Change.org petition seeking
to hold Apple accountable for
the defect.
Ultimately, the lawsuit alleges,
Apple is "aware of" these
keyboard issues, either
via "pre-release testing,"
customer complaints, or a
combination thereof, but the
company has "failed and
continues to fail to disclose"
the defect to customers.
"Apple knew that the
MacBook is defective at
or before the time it began
selling the affected
models to the
public," the suit
reads, adding that
"Complaints of
keyboard failures
began to come in
shortly after the
2015 MacBook
was launched.
Despite awareness
of the keyboard
defect, Apple
equipped future
model MacBook
and MacBook
Pro laptops with
the butterfly
keyboard, and
continued selling
these laptops to
consumers at
premium prices."
While the suit
acknowledges
Apple's
provision of
an official
support
document outlining steps to
clean a MacBook or MacBook
Pro keyboard exhibiting signs
of "an unresponsive key"
or "a key that feels different
than the other keys," the
suit is clear to point out that
following these steps "do not
fix the keyboard defect or
prevent the keyboard from
failing" in any way.
Among other things, the suit
accuses Apple of fraudulent
concealment, and for violating
California's Unfair Competition
Law and Consumer
Legal Remedies Act, the
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