Everybody has an opinion. Lately, everybody has a legal opinion. You have heard of jail-house lawyers, felons who make the most of their life sentences by reading case law all day. Now, everyone's a lawyer without doing any reading at all. Consider this by one Wilson Rothman (twitter), sci-tech columnist for msnbc.com and cook, about the iPhone 4 and the news that lawsuits have been filed over its apparent defects in reception capabilities:
What's annoying is that lawyers catch wind of this healthy debate and think, "How can I use this to make money?" So, within a week, the first anti-iPhone 4 class action suits have been filed. There are a lot of serious terms being hurled hither and yon, my favorite being "breach of implied warranty of fitness."
But how on earth is anyone going to prove this stuff? It's not enough to show that the iPhone 4 has some reception quirks — I imagine you'd also have to prove that other phones don't. Good luck with that.
See msnbc column here.
Actually, what's more annoying is that sci-tech/cook pundits get wind of these lawsuits and think: how can I fill my next column with some edgy commentary which disparages lawyers and the American legal system? The foregoing by Rothman is complete garbage. His msnbc editor, if indeed he even has one, is as clueless as Rothman.
It is doubtful that the iPhone 4 lawsuits are going to try to prove up the breach of implied warranty claim by showing that the iPhone 4 has "reception quirks." And one does not typically have to prove that other products in the category are free of quirks. Rothman clearly cooked all that up out of sheer desperation for something to say.
What's truly ironic is that Rothman himself, in the very same silly column, alludes to what could be evidence of a breach of implied warranty!
Steve Jobs' promise that calls would be better because of the new body design? That must have been wishful thinking.
If in fact Steve Jobs made that promise, then that, Mr. Rothman, might be some evidence which would support a breach of warranty claim, or a breach of contract claim, or perhaps a consumer protection act claim.
If Apple customers bought the iPhone 4 on the strength or authority of that promise, which promise of better reception was not in fact kept, how could a lawsuit for breaking that promise, a promise on which customers relied, be "asinine," as Rothman writes in his "legal" opinion masked as a tech column?
No, what is asinine is Rothman failing to exercise a moment's reflection on his opinions to see that he refutes himself.
Rothman is not the only would-be blogger-lawyer with asinine legal opinions which Apple customers read at their peril. See this for more bad legal advice: The Apple-AT&T class action suit should have come years ago.
