Motorola sued over Bluetooth headset
Posted on Monday, October 23, 2006
It’s an increasingly familiar sight — people walking around talking and gesturing as if carrying on a conversation, with no obvious listener nearby, but a glowing blue device hooked over one of their ears.
Many of them have no idea that they may be slowly going deaf, according to a wave of lawsuits being filed across the country, including one filed last week in federal court in Little Rock.
The initial wave of proposed class-action lawsuits target certain mobile telephone providers — in this case, Motorola — who are accused of marketing and distributing headsets with Bluetooth technology without warning customers of the devices ’ potential for causing gradual noise-induced hearing loss.
Bluetooth radio technology permits wireless communication between two devices, such as a cellular phone and a headset. The lawsuits claim that because the Bluetooth headsets are fastened around just one ear, ambient noise absorbed by the other ear forces users to turn up the headsets’ volume to dangerously high decibel levels, just to hear through them.
In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court for the eastern district of Arkansas, Little Rock legal assistant Hayley Frye notes that Motorola has manufactured and distributed at least 11 models of Bluetooth headsets.
The suit alleges, “Each headset is defective in design and not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of noise induced hearing loss which can occur if the headsets are used at the higher volume settings over a period of time, a condition which has no cure or treatment.”
Juli Burda, a spokesman for Motorola’s corporate offices, said Thursday that the company does not comment on pending litigation.
Attorney James McHugh of Hattiesburg, Miss., who filed the suit on Frye’s behalf, said Thursday that it is part of an initial wave of proposed class-action lawsuits being filed across the country, by him and by other attorneys. He said Frye hopes to represent a class that would consist of all Arkansas customers of Motorola who have Bluetooth concerns.
McHugh said Frye used her Bluetooth device for work and for personal use for about six months, but stopped using it after she noticed that she had to turn the volume up high to hear through it properly.
“I think we have reached her in time that she hasn’t suffered hearing loss,” McHugh said, adding that Frye has not had her hearing tested.
The lawsuit cited research showing that “normal conversation measures around 60 decibels and headphones kept at this level do not pose a risk of hearing loss.”
Citing the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, it also notes that exposure to sound averaging 85 decibels for more than eight hours a day “presents a risk of hearing loss,” and “each three-decibel volume increase reduces the safe exposure time by half.”
“Motorola’s headsets have volume controls which have the capacity to produce sounds with time weighted averages exceeding 85 decibels, with sound often peaking in excess of 100 decibels,” the suit states. “The headsets are designed in such a manner that the consumer is deprived of any ability to determine the decibel level of the sound being emitted from the headset.”
The suit goes on to assert, “In a test recently performed by the American Speech-Hearing-Language Association, Motorola’s H 700 model headset produced decibel levels of up to 106 decibels at the high setting.”
“At that level,” McHugh said Thursday, “you can only listen to it for a minute or two before hearing loss occurs.”
McHugh said Motorola was asked to put a warning label on their products, but, “They basically said no and invited us to sue.”
“We’re facing an epidemic in the U. S. because these devices are becoming so popular,” he said, adding that their popularity is partly due to state legislatures imposing penalties for motorists who drive with a cell phone held to their ear.
Interestingly, according to several Web sites, Bluetooth technology also is being used in hearing aids, to help people hear better.
Frye’s lawsuit, assigned to U. S. District Judge James M. Moody, seeks general and punitive damages, and a permanent injunction preventing Motorola from selling, marketing or advertising the headsets to consumers without a warning about the potential for noise-induced hearing loss and a mechanism by which the user can “readily and easily determine the decibel levels.”
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