lawsuits

Your iPod Is Not Legally Responsible for Your Hearing Loss

You know those people who blast Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga, or Flo Rida on their iPods on the subway, thinking that they are the only people in the car who can hear it? You know, the people who tempt you, halfway down the car, to dance along to the music just to let them know how effing loud it is? (Not the people who sing aloud to the song only they are hearing, because that’s an entirely different breed.) Often we wonder if all that noise hurts their ears. And some of those people say it does, and joined a class-action suit over claims of hearing damage that has gone all the way up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Yesterday the court ruled against the plaintiffs, not because it’s their own damn fault for playing the music so loud in the first place (why does the subway turn us into crotchety old men?), but because they couldn’t prove that the iPod posed an “unreasonable risk of noise-induced hearing loss.” Apple shares climbed $2.54 after the news.

iPod suit plaintiffs get earful [NYP]

Your iPod Is Not Legally Responsible for Your Hearing Loss