Apple Faces Defective MacBook Pro Class Action Lawsuit

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Apple, Inc. was hit with a class action lawsuit Monday by a California man who alleges that the MacBook Pro series of laptop computers are defectively designed, causing the computers to malfunction.

The MacBook Pro class action lawsuit was filed in the California Superior Court in Los Angeles by Armen Soudijan, who purchased a MacBook Pro laptop in 2013, which he says came “with a defective graphics processing unit and/or defective graphics card implementation.”

The defect “breaks the computer screen, causes computer freezes, crashes, and ultimately renders the laptop computers unusable,” he alleges.

Soudijan claims that “he was subjecting the laptop to normal use, including use of video processing, when he experienced a range of screen malfunctions, freezes, and ultimately crashes.”

“The frequency and severity of the problem continued and increased,” he said in his Apple class action lawsuit.

Soudijan’s MacBook Pro was part of a line of Apple laptops released in 2011, which includes the 13 inch, the 15 inch, and the 17 inch screens.

“Each of these products is designed, manufactured, marketed, sold, and built with a similar graphic processing unit and graphics processing card implementation and design, which is flawed and defective and causes the machine to unreasonably fail,” the MacBook Pro class action lawsuit explains.

“Symptoms of failure include, but are not limited to, lines on the screen, garbled text, colored lines, rendering of the screen useless, freezes, shutdowns, and crashes, including data loss and full hardware malfunction,” the lawsuit claims.

“Many consumers report many or all of these symptoms,” it adds.

According to Soudijan, these problems have been cited in “dozens of articles in print and online.” And several reports claim that these problems begin “almost immediately after the product is used.”

The California man alleges that “Apple is aware of the issue and had not take[n] adequate steps to remedy the situation either through warranty claims, recalls, or otherwise.”

He claims that it is enough of a problem that on Apple’s own community forum there are more than “600 pages of complaints” about these problems.

Soudijan says that there were similar problems with Apple’s line of computers that were released in 2008, which also had problems with the graphics processing unit.

“The Macbook Pro line of laptop computers is sold and advertised at a premium price for a product capable of handling professional level computing tasks such as multimedia and video processing,” Soudijan explained.

“Heavier use of the graphical capabilities of the 2011 line of Macbook laptop computers likely causes symptoms and malfunctions to exhibit themselves sooner and be more severe,” he added.

Soudijan’s charges against Apple in this MacBook Pro lawsuit includes violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law, breach of implied warranty, breach of express warranty, and unjust enrichment.

He is asking for damages and injunctive relief, preventing Apple from selling defective products.

Apple was hit with a similar class action lawsuit in a California federal court on Oct. 28 also alleging that the 2011 line of MacBook Pro laptop computers contain system failures and graphic issues.

The plaintiff and proposed class are represented by Brian S. Kabateck, Evan M. Zucker and Jennifer Duffy of Kabateck Brown Kellner LLP.

Counsel information for the Apple wasn’t immediately available.

The Defective MacBook Pro Class Action Lawsuit is Soudjian v. Apple Inc., Case No. BC562621, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles.