Legal drama is nothing new for Apple—Samsung, e-books, App Store trademarks, etc. But the company has probably never seen anything like the 50-page complaint AboveTheLaw.com points out this week.
Plaintiff (and attorney) Chris Sevier filed the document (Scribd) against Apple in a US District Court in Nashville, TN last month. Sevier's beef with Cupertino boils down to a simple fact: it sells machines that allow people to view porn. From his introduction (all formatting, grammar, spelling left as is):
The Plaintiff loves Apple. The Plaintiff believes in Apple, as a company and knows that it has good intent. Since its inception, Apple has always been a pro-family company, Apple has always been an entity that is concerned with the welfare of our Nation's children, while furthering pro-American values. There is no reason for Apple, a private company to overly support pornography online, explicit sexual content which has led to the proliferation of arousal addiction, sex trafficking, prostitution, and countless numbers of destroyed lives. The Plaintiff respectfully demand that Apple sell all of its devices on "safe mode," with software preset to filter out pornographic content. If the purchaser of Apple's products is over 18, Apple should allow the buyer to take additional step to acquire a password from Apple in order to remove the filter to access Constitutionally protected indecent content. If the buyer is under 18, Apple should not provide the password.
Sevier is seeking damages and injunctive relief against Apple because it makes products that can display porn ("or as the rest of us call it, the Internet," AboveTheLaw notes). So Sevier legally requests that Apple enable a porn-filtering "safe mode" by default on its devices. His complaint notes that "If Apple agrees to sell its devices 'on safe mode' before trial, the Plaintiff will terminate this litigation."
The 50 pages contain a plethora of eyebrow-raising gems. Sevier claims his porn addiction started because of a simple typo in Safari (he was trying to access "facebook.com"). He alleges Apple's porn offering led to unfair competition between his wife and porn stars, which ultimately caused a deteriorating relationship. Sevier's electronic group, called Ghost Wars, even made a supporting YouTube video (referenced in the complaint) "that summarizes the issues in the lawsuit as it relates to rewiring, voyeurism products liability, and systemic problems that are the direct result of our collective arrogance to not do something about an problem area [sic]."
Unsurprisingly, Apple has yet to respond to the filing according to cir.ca.
UPDATE: Above the Law notes in an update that the lawyer-plaintiff in this case was put on "inactive status" by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2011 due to "mental infirmity or illness."
reader comments
326