“Oh my gosh! I'd file a suit too!! Or free phones for life lol”
“What the hell, file a lawsuit haha”
Above are two of the comments friends of Luke Schilhab of Lake Jackson made on his Facebook page when he posted a photograph of the cell phone-shaped, second-degree burn he received on the right side of his abdomen after rolling over on the iPhone 6 he'd left lying on the bed next to him when he went to sleep one night last April.
Schilhab and his burn were featured on KTRK Eyewitness News a couple of days later. It seems Schilhab got into a swimming pool with his phone still in his pocket one Saturday and got it soaking wet. He tried to dry it out by putting it a container of rice, but by Sunday evening it still wouldn't come on.
Schilhab says he left the damaged phone on the bed next to him “out of habit” when he went to sleep that night and was burned by it the next morning.
A local technology expert told Eyewitness News that the idea of using rice to dry out a wet cellphone is “an internet myth” and warned that wet smartphone batteries can be hazardous.
For some reason, Schilhab blames Apple for the mishap he brought on himself. He filed a product liability lawsuit against the company in Brazoria County District Court last month, but it was subsequently moved to Galveston federal court.
Not all of Schilhab's friends are as litigious as the two whose comments were cited above. Some offered more practical advice:
“I would change brands and don't sleep with it”
“Yeah I've stopped sleeping with mine since it got so hot that one time”
“don't take it to bed”
And one gave him a foretaste of the response he's likely to get in court:
“thats dumb. you jumped into a pool with it. why did the news even bother with this? its not like its apples fault. does the damn thing say water proof?”