Attn: Plaintiff Attorneys:

The Associated Press is reporting that the iPod craze has spawned a crime wave in New York City subways. Police told the NYC transportation board on Wednesday that 50 iPods have been reported stolen on the subways so far this year, compared to none during the same period last year.

What the AP didn’t report however whether any class action lawsuits are being prepared against Apple. One can only speculate whether this country’s plaintiff’s lawyers haven’t been salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the iPod craze. To accomplish that they would need to show that the simple devices are somehow inherently dangerous and that Apple has been negligent in selling them.

Given the news that thieves might be targeting people with the telltale white earpieces, once can imagine that a class action lawsuit is not far off and it is easy to imagine the lawyer’s line of reasoning:

• If Apple really cared about their customers they would either ship iPods with cheaper, more generic looking earphones or at least put a warning sticker on them letting them know that by wearing the distinctive earpieces in public they are putting themselves in harm’s way.

After a little work on venue shopping, a good plaintiffs attorney should be able to find a jurist that would not only see the iPods as walking “Please Mug Me” billboards but also that these little music devices often carry RAP music with hateful, violent lyrics and that much of the music on them is STOLEN! There is probably even a song on an iPod somewhere talking about killing a judge and you can bet that this will be introduced at trial.

The question is whether a pesky plaintiff’s attorney can do what Sony, iRiver, Creative Soundlabs, and other digital media players couldn’t do and derail the iPod.

Yes, the above is tongue and cheek, but with a legal system where you don’t really have to be damaged to sue for damages and the cost of defending class actions suit as high as they are, is the above hypothetical situation that far off.

Update: It turns out iPods really are dangerous!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2005 at 9:35 am by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.