$54 Million Lawsuit Filed after Best Buy Loses Laptop with Sensitive Data and Refuses to Admit It
Remember the infamous "McDonald's lawsuit"? You know which one I'm talking about: a woman spills coffee on her lap, sues McDonald's, and wins $2.7 million dollars in a classic case of a frivolous lawsuit. Or was it? Closer examination of the McDonald's case reveals a lot of details that didn't quite make it in to the news media.
Like this important detail: the 81-year-old woman who filed the lawsuit only did so because McDonald's refused to pay for medical bills when their ultra-hot coffee - 20 degrees hotter than the industry standard - caused third-degree burns on the woman's genital area. The $2.7 million awarded (later lowered by the judge to $480,000) was mostly punitive damages, calculated based on twice the $1.3 million per day that McDonald's made selling the ultra-hot coffee at the time of the lawsuit.
Quite reasonably, the jury ruled that because McDonald's had ignored over 700 complaints that their too-hot coffee had caused skin burns, they should now pay the price for a blatant disregard for the wellbeing of their own customers.
Now, another high-profile lawsuit is pursuing a similar line of reasoning, that a large company's policies have been an affront to customers too long and that in this case, they've crossed a line that no public relations guru can spin.
A Washington, D.C. woman named Raelyn Campbell brought a lawsuit against Best Buy for a fantastic $54 million over a laptop that Best Buy's service department lost. Yet despite the massive figure, the story Campbell tells is all too common from anyone who has dealt with customer service in any capacity.
After turning in her laptop, which was under warranty, to Best Buy's service department, Campbell waited the stated 4-6 weeks for service. When two months was up, she began calling nearly daily when employees and managers wouldn't give her a straight answer about where her laptop was or when she could expect it returned. Finally, a manager admitted the truth: they didn't have it the entire time, because it was lost.
In compensation, Best Buy offered her store credit that covered most of the laptop and warranty amount, then upped their offers a few more times after much protest by Campbell.
But that's not the worst of it.
A lawyer who advised Campbell asked what the laptop contained. Aside from irreplaceable personal photographs and documents related to her work with an Asian non-profit company, Campbell revealed that she had all of her tax records and information on the computer. Bingo.
According to Washington, D.C. law, a company must notify a customer of possible identity theft if data that it holds is stolen, lost or a data breach of any kind occurs. By stringing Raelyn Campbell along over her missing laptop, Best Buy was not only casting doubt on its own customer service practices, but actually breaking a federal law.
Campbell has claimed in an interview with MSNBC that she doesn't expect to win millions of dollars nor does she think she deserves it. Rather, the massive figure attached to the lawsuit is meant to be a wakeup call to Best Buy and arouse the attention of national media to focus on Best Buy's worst practices.
Campbell also relates that she didn't jump to the immediate conclusion that she should seek $54 million in compensation for her lost laptop. She only arrived at the sky-high figure after the weeks and weeks of run-around that Best Buy gave her and for refusing to offer her a reasonable amount of compensation for her lost property and give her a straight answer about what happened.
Now she has spent more money on legal counsel, lawsuit filing fees and identity theft protection services, among other things. And Best Buy's offer after seeing the lawsuit? $2,500, plus a gift card to make sure she'll remain a loyal Best Buy customer.
Hopefully, public scrutiny will be kinder to Campbell than it was to the 81-year-old woman who sued McDonald's after getting her genitals burned by scalding coffee. McDonald's was the beneficiary in 1994, when the public cried "Frivolous!" to that notorious lawsuit, but that doesn't mean Best Buy will find the same happy fate for its awful breach of customer trust and federal law here.