LG Electronics on Wednesday settled a lawsuit seeking damages based on widespread hardware defects identified in a number of its smartphone models, with the company agreeing to compensate the plaintiffs with up to $700, as revealed by Girard Gibbs LLP which represented the litigants in the dispute. The individuals who helped bring the case to court are eligible for up to $425 in cash damages or a $700 rebate meant to reduce the price of their next smartphone purchase, as per the conditions of the settlement. The actual amount of damages that will be offered to every plaintiff will depend on their faulty handsets, with the lawsuit covering the LG G4, G5, V10, and the V20, as well as the Nexus 5X created in partnership with Google. The case specifically targeted bootlooping, a defect that prevents handsets from getting past their boot screens and actually load up the Android operating system.
The rebate offered by the South Korean tech giant can only be put toward the purchase of one of its newer mobile devices, whereas the law firm that initiated the litigation has now placed its page where potentially affected owners were able to submit a request to join the lawsuit behind a password, effectively shutting it down, which was presumably one of the terms of the agreement with LG. The case itself was sent to arbitration over the summer so the exact specifics of the ruling remain undisclosed. Everyone who participated in the lawsuit will either be contacted by Girard Gibbs LLP in the coming days or has already received word of the development from the law firm and is urged to file a claim by Monday, February 12th, in order to be compensated by the defendant. The Seoul-based company has yet to comment on the matter in a public capacity and it’s presently unclear whether it has any plans to do so given the private nature of arbitration.
All plaintiffs who file their claims in the next 11 days should receive their due damages in a reasonable timeframe that likely won’t be longer than a few weeks, with the case being expected to be entirely settled by spring. LG has been rethinking its mobile strategy in recent years, having opted to stop doing refreshes of its high-end offerings after an arbitrary 12-month mark and is now looking to support its Android flagships for longer, though it’s still leaving room for more frequent yet minor hardware revisions, with one such revamp of the V30 Plus being expected to debut late next month at MWC 2018.