Ridiculous revisited

"It's a ridiculous number. I had to come up with a number that was significant enough that might force them to pay attention to me," stated Raelyn Campbell.

Raelyn Campbell, 37, filed her lawsuit Nov 16 2007 in Washington Superior Court against Best Buy Co. Campbell, a Washington D C resident claims that the Richfield-based company failed to immediately notify her of the posibility of identity theft and she also wants to ensure customer privacy protection in the future. She claims that Best Buy lost her laptop computer while it was in for repairs and then tried to cover up the disappearance.

What makes up the majority of the ridiculous number she is sueing for is based on what she claims are the cost of her computer, expenses for identity theft protection and punitive damages. A Best Buy spokesman stated that the company had already given Campbell $1,110.35 for the cost of the laptop and warrenty along with a $500 gift card.

Campbell acknowledges that sometime in October, the $1,110.35 credit appeared on her credit card and she didn't know why it had but kept it to pay her expenses. She added that she tried to return the giftcard and when that failed, she donated it.

This all began when Campbell brought her one year old laptop in to have a power switch worked on. The $1,000 14-inch computer was about a year old and she claims that it was "stolen" while in their care sometime after May 25 but she wasn't informed of that until Aug 9 2007. She posted in her blog that Best Buy had upped it's offer to $2,500 with nondisclosure and non-liability provisions. It would seem that Best Buy, even though they lost her computer, had tried to offer a reasonable amount of money to cover her expenses.

Evidently, Campbell has taken a few notes from Roy Pearson in D C, since she is now sueing for $54 million. It's those darn punitive damages in Washington that just seem to add up so quickly. Maybe she could look into hiring Pearson for her lawsuit, since his lawsuit has failed miserably and he doesn't have a job or his $54 million pants from the dry cleaners yet.


For related posts, go here and here.