Turns out all those heartfelt, video apologies and free apps aren’t going to be enough to stop people from suing Research in Motion over BlackBerry outages. Lawsuits in the U.S. and Canada were filed on Wednesday accusing the phone maker of “breach of contract, negligence and unjust enrichment.” I think I’m going to have to incorporate that last one into my everyday vocabulary.
BARBER: That’ll be 20 bucks.
ME: I asked for a trim around the ears and you gave me a mullet.
BARBER: Well, it is shorter around the ears. 20 bucks please.
ME: (sulkily fishing out my wallet) Take the money, but know this: you sir, have been unjustly enriched.
MOTHER: Don’t worry, it’ll grow out.
The potential damage could be astronomical, possibly driving the final nail in RIM’s coffin. Of course that depends on a court deciding that people were really destroyed by the outage and not merely hassled. Reuters reports that “The U.S. complaint estimates that Research in Motion earns at least $3.4 million per day in service revenue, collected from customers through carrier networks including Sprint and Verizon. ‘Plaintiff and the Class ultimately paid these fees,’ it said.
The size of the potential class of U.S. consumers would include 2.4 million California residents alone, the lawsuit said.”
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