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Judge Dismisses Class Action Lawsuit Over iMac Screen Issues

Tuesday December 22, 2009 7:50 am PST by Eric Slivka
TechCrunch reports that a U.S. federal court judge has dismissed a class action lawsuit brought against Apple for reported failure to disclose manufacturing defects present in the company's iMac models.

The lawsuit stated that unwanted vertical lines would appear on the devices after the warranty period had expired and that Apple "internally recognizes and concedes" the defect, but did nothing to warn consumers.

As noted by AppleInsider, the suit was brought by a customer who purchased an iMac G5 in October 2006 and noticed vertical lines appearing on his display in March 2008. The dismissal of the class action suit reportedly stems from the plantiff's attempt to include all iMac customers in the class covered by the suit, even those who had experienced no problems and thus suffered no injury.

"These type of class actions are not suitable for actions where recovery of money damages is the primary relief sought by the plaintiff," Fogel wrote. "The purpose of this lawsuit is money damages. These pleading deficiencies are present despite the fact that Hovsepian has been given two opportunities to amend his complaint. Accordingly, the class actions will be struck without prejudice."

The class action suit and its dismissal are unrelated to the firmware update issued by Apple yesterday to address certain graphics issues on the company's latest 27" iMac models.

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