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Apple's $30 billion cash hoard makes it a popular target for lawsuits, especially from patent trolls and numerous class action groups alleging various product flaws. But every once is a while, Apple is named in a lawsuit that defies all logic. Such a case was recently filed in Missouri Eastern District Court, which alleges that Apple aided and abetted the Mafia to transmit death threats directly to Gregory McKenna's iPod mini.
The case is hardly bizarre for the blame that McKenna lays at Apple's feet. Try to follow me here: McKenna worked briefly for a modeling agency in New York, which he claims is a front run by the Mob. After McKenna stopped getting paid, he quit and moved back home to St. Louis in 2000. Alleged Mafia members showed up at a St Louis nightclub to threaten McKenna to return to work for them, both as a model and a homosexual sex slave. These Mafia members then proceeded to "stalk, harass, threaten, extort, attempt rape, and kidnap" McKenna.
Naturally, McKenna called the cops. However, he says the St Louis Police Department repeatedly ignored his pleas for help. When the STLPD wouldn't listen to him, he called the FBI. When they wouldn't listen to him, he called the Department of Justice—they wouldn't listen to him either. All three are named as defendants in the case since their complacency aided the Mafia in its supposed campaign to ruin McKenna's life.
McKenna is also convinced that the Mob has his home and car bugged, and named both a auto repair shop and a private investigator that he hired to find the bugs as aiding the Mafia in its nine-year quest to harass McKenna. And here's where Apple's alleged culpability comes into play—McKenna says Apple adds illegal receivers to its iPods to allow the Mafia to send clear, audible death threats through the portable media player.
McKenna claims that an iPod shuffle he bought in 2005 via eBay and an iPod mini that he claims he bought in 2006 new from an Apple Store (note that the mini was discontinued eight months before he bought it) both contain illegal receivers that Apple built in the devices, ostensibly at the request of the Mob. He claims in his lengthy, 124-page complaint that, in 2008, he was able to record Mafia members sending death threats to his iPod mini stating, "I'm about to kill him," in "unison" with a song he was listening to.
The complaint is so bizarre, so elaborate, I'm not sure whether to laugh at its absurdity or feel sorry for McKenna, who is representing himself in the lawsuit. However, here in Orbiting HQ we think this may top a lawsuit last year claiming Steve Jobs and Apple conspired with South Carolina correction officer to sexually harass an inmate with a prolific history of filing "creative" lawsuits.
McKenna is demanding $14.3 million in total damages from all ten named defendants, including $550,000 per year in lost wages that are the direct result of the elaborate conspiracy against him, and a variety of compensatory and punitive damages."
Yeah, i don't believe this one bit, and i will be ashamed if he actually wins this lawsuit. It's just another hot cup of coffee spilled on someones crotch.
