It’s not very often we hear of a smartphone burning its owner. It’s even rarer that we hear of that very owner suing the company that made the handset over his related injuries. However, that’s exactly what’s happened in a federal court in New York, reports the NY Post.
52-year-old New York resident Muhammad Sattar works for a Manhattan investment bank, specifically in the firm’s IT department. According to Sattar, he owned an Optimus F6, released during the tail end of 2013 by LG. The phone gave him no issues for several months. However, on January 13, the handset allegedly exploded while in Sattar’s pants pocket. “It was just in his pocket, sitting there, and it blew up,” said Lawrence Goldhirsch, Sattar’s lawyer.
Because of the explosion, alleges Sattar, he received second- and third-degree burns on his hand and right leg. The burns were serious enough to send him to the Weill Cornell Medical Center, where Sattar received skin grafts in the hospital’s burn center. The burns also forced Sattar to miss at least one month of work, which is partly why Sattar brought this lawsuit against LG.
It’s unknown how much Sattar is suing LG for, but given the seriousness of his injuries and the amount of time he missed from his job, it likely isn’t a minuscule figure.
Sattar might be happy to know that scientists have finally created a battery that won’t explode in anyone’s pockets by introducing a fail-safe. Even though the results have been published, given how new this technology is, it might take some time before it hits consumer products. Until then, don’t fret about putting your phones in your pockets, but do fret about riding hoverboards: even the federal government suggests that, if you own one of those, you should keep a fire extinguisher close by.
