Lawyer loses Time Capsule backup, iPhone data

Lawyer Perminder S. Tung, a resident of Surrey, British Columbia, has filed a lawsuit against Apple Canada for the demise of his nearly three-year-old Time Capsule. According to the court documents filed earlier this week, Tung accuses Apple of being in breach of contract for failure to provide promised services and goods, and is seeking over $25,000 in damages for the failure of the networking device and the loss of the "sole backup" of his iPhone, containing irreplaceable "information and memories" not stored anyplace other than the phone and the router.

Tung said the router and backup unit failed on or around March 14 of this year, nearly three years after he purchased it. He then called Apple tech support who refused to troubleshoot as the product was clearly out of the one-year warranty. A day later, he brought the Time Capsule into Apple Specialist Simply Computing's Langley location, who also told Tung that it was out of warranty, and suggested he bring it back to the Apple Store where it was purchased.

Six days later, the genius at the Apple Store in the Pacific Centre indicated the data on the Time Capsule was lost and unretrievable, but admitted that previous models were known to develop problems. Tung was offered a replacement unit at a lower-than-retail cost, but refused the offer.

Before Tung could institute a replacement backup solution procured on his own, his iPhone failed, and data from the birth of his first child were lost, as well as "other significant memories" stored in the phone which were apparently not stored in iPhoto, iCloud storage, or an iTunes backup of his phone. The court documents accuse the company of a "breach of contract and negligence of Apple and its employees" as the root cause of Tung "suffering losses," including replacement costs and loss of data. The court documents filed also refer to an "implication made known to Apple and it's representatives" at the time of sale by Tung that he required that "if the product were to fail, the stored data would be retrievable," thus allegedly proving that the failure of the product lies in Apple's hands.

While a very specific range of Apple's Time Capsule was issued a repair extension authorization, the dates and serial numbers of the recalled units are very narrow, with a sale date between February and June of 2008. Tung purchased his time capsule in June of 2009 -- a year after the cut-off for the repair extension. The model he bought was most likely the second version of the product, which addressed the known issues in the first version.

Specifics of the Time Capsule's mode of failure are not available, nor is the reason for the iPhone's demise. Apple Canada has yet to comment on the filing.

By Electronista Staff

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industry, peripherals, lawsuit, Time Capsule, Apple