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RIM faces lawsuit over BlackBerry outage
jeff gray — LAW REPORTER
Globe and Mail Update
Published Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011 12:45PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011 1:08PM EDT
A law firm in Montreal has filed a potential class action lawsuit against Waterloo, Ont. -based Research in Motion RIM-T over the massive outage of BlackBerry smart phone service earlier this month.
Lawyer Jeff Orenstein of Consumer Law Group Inc. filed a lawsuit in Quebec Superior Court on Tuesday, demanding compensation for Canadian BlackBerry users who were left without e-mail, BlackBerry messenger service and Internet access during the outages, which occurred between Oct. 11 to Oct. 14.
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The BlackBerry maker has had no shortage of bad news lately, with the lengthy outage of service adding to its woes. But it has already offered consumers some compensation for the problems its system suffered earlier this month.
The lawsuit must first be certified as a class action by a judge. The claims in the lawsuit have not been proven in court. The suit says RIM should compensate customers directly, or arrange for the wireless service providers to do so, based on a pro-rated amount for the length time customers were without full BlackBerry service.
A few days after the outage, RIM offered some BlackBerry users a free month of technical support and $100 worth of free app downloads. It has also reportedly discussed payments for the wireless service providers themselves in the wake of the outage.
But the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of a BlackBerry user who says he relies on the system's message service to stay in touch with friends in "Trinidad, England, Barbados and the United States" argues these moves are not enough.
The man "expected to be compensated for the loss of services to which he was paying a monthly fee for. Instead, he was disappointed to learn that RIM was only offering some free App downloads that he does not want or need," the lawsuit reads.
Based on his data plan, which costs $25 a month, the lawsuit claims he is individually owed $1.25 for the one-and-a-half days he did not have service. Potentially hundreds of thousands of others are owed similar amounts across Canada, the lawsuit claims.
Click here to read the claim
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