How’s That Again? Lawsuits Claim Bluetooth Causes Hearing Loss
Yes, spilling a hot cup of coffee in your lap isn’t good for you.
Does that justify suing the McDonald’s restaurant that served the superhot coffee? For hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Yeah, I know, there’s more to that McDonald’s story. But we thought we’d bring it up, because in the last few days a handful of lawsuits has sprung up against Motorola, Jabra, and other Bluetooth headset manufacturers. Users of these headsets are claiming that using them for extended periods of time, at high volume levels, can cause hearing loss.
In the words of one of these lawsuits:
“Each headset is defective in design and not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of noise induced hearing loss which can occur if the headsets are used at the higher volume settings over a period of time, a condition which has no cure or treatment.?
In other words - nothing in the documentation that comes with these headsets warns people not to turn the volume up too loud, for too long. (Whether that’s the case or not, is something to be argued in court.)
Sony and Apple have already dealt with similar legal claims against Walkmans and iPods. And there are studies being commissioned to investigate the problem.
Meanwhile, we can be fairly sure that one interest group will be a clear winner when this latest round of lawsuits is finished.
The lawyers.
[via RealTechNews, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, tampabay.com]
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:31 pm
[...] In the midst of a wave of lawsuits against manufacturers of Bluetooth headsets, with users claiming hearing loss, the University of Colorado and Children’s Hospital in Boston are out with an analysis of how long the average person can listen to music coming out of an MP3 player’s earphones. [...]
January 3rd, 2007 at 2:07 pm
[...] This is not the suit by Verizon Wireless customers complaining about their Bluetooth functionality being crippled. Or the suit claiming that Bluetooth headsets are dangerously loud. It is also not an identity theft suit filed by the Viking warrior Bluetooth, for whom the technology was named. [...]