ATTORNEY BRIAN S. KABATECK ON TECHNOLOGY LITIGATION AND RIGHTING OLD WRONGS
By Paul Halpern
Lawyers and Settlements
rticles/10464/brian-kabateck-interview.html
April 21 2008
Los Angeles, CA: Brian S. Kabateck, founding partner of Kabateck Brown
Kellner, LLP, specializes in consumer class action and mass torts. His
client list includes the likes of Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon, Jose
Conseco, and Lou Ferrigno. As we’ll see, it also includes the victims
of genocide from almost a century ago.
LawyersandSettlements (LAS): You recently filed a class action against
Apple Computers. What was that centered on?
Brian S. Kabateck (BSK): This case concerns the iMac computer that came
out in August 2007. This iMac came in two versions, one with a 20-inch
monitor and one with a 24-inch monitor. We’re not doing anything about
the 24-inch model, which was all it claimed to be. The 20-inch model,
however, only had 6-bit color, but it was advertised as having sharp
images with millions of colors, and as an improvement over the previous
model from 2006. The 24-inch model did have sharp images and millions
of colors, but the 20-inch has less video memory and fewer colors,
and the screen’s blurry, which has led to a lot of problems for users.
Our case is not a technology case, we’re merely criticizing their
misrepresentation and failure to disclose this information about the
20-inch model. It doesn’t have millions of colors, it only display
262,144 colors, and the reason they did that was to save money, because
it uses a significantly less expensive memory card to drive the screen.
LAS: Your firm has handled a number of cases against technology
companies like Apple. Were they all similar to this one?
BSK: We’ve done several similar technology cases against companies
like Epson and Hewlett-Packard. We have several lawyers who do
this kind of work; it’s one of our special areas of interest. These
cases have involved TVs, the Xbox, printers, both laser and inkjet,
computer memory, and other types of cases. It’s a specialized subset
of consumer litigation.
We always bring these cases based on misrepresentation. They always
find ways to oversell or make promises that don’t deliver and wind
up costing the consumer money. The Apple case is typical. We just
filed and served in the Northern District of California before Judge
Patricia Trumbull and are now waiting for Apple to respond.
This is one of those situations where Apple should really just step
up and do the right thing and fix these computers. An upgrade would
be one acceptable method; so would giving the class members their
money back or giving them the price difference. Everything has a
value and everything has a real price, and what they advertised and
what they delivered were two different products. One option in cases
where people thought they were buying X and got Y is to give them
the cash back or give them the opportunity to have it fixed. We’re
always hoping they’ll do the right thing, but otherwise we’ll file
to have the case certified by the end of the year.
LAS: You’ve also been involved in litigation around the Turkish
genocide committed against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Can
you tell us about that?
BSK: That’s very special. I’m half Armenian and my grandparents
were both survivors of the Amernian holocaust. I got my start doing
insurance bad faith cases, so this was sort of a natural progression
for me. We still have cases pending involving an insurance company
and a bank and we’re looking into four other insurance companies and
one other bank.
The life insurance cases are ones where there were companies who sold
policies to Armenians in the Ottoman Empire before the genocide in
1915. The other category is banks that did business in the Ottoman
Empire and had Armenian depositors, and never paid them after the
genocide, so the money still belongs to the descendants of the victims.
LAS: This sounds like it would involve an incredible amount of research
going back many years.
BSK: It’s fascinating. We have to have archivists search depositories
and archives throughout the world. Corporations are funny, they keep
all these records and documents, so we’ve been successful in finding
evidence of what occurred.
It’s been to their benefit to ignore not so much the genocide itself,
but rather their own obligations. The insurance companies never made
the list of policy holders available, the banks never advised Armenian
organizations that they had the deposits, so they profited from the
genocide. They didn’t kill anyone, but they profited by failing to
pay what they owed.
If they had a life insurance policy on someone who died in the
genocide and never had to pay it off, that’s making a profit from the
genocide. It’s also true for bank deposits; a small amount deposited
in an account could have been used to start a new life in America or
other countries for the Armenian people who were scattered after the
genocide. When they didn’t make the information available, they made a
profit from it. The League of Nations actually had a commission that
tried to get this information out, to get the benefits paid, and the
companies stonewalled them, so they did benefit from this genocide.
LAS: This sounds like it’s a matter of the heart for you.
BSK: Absolutely. We’re the only lawyers who have brought these kinds
of cases. This is not the kind of case we profit off of; we may make
enough to cover our expenses, but we’re really doing it because it
needs to be done.
Brian Kabateck, founding partner in Kabateck Brown Kellner LLP,
is a 1985 graduate of the University of California and received his
JD from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, in 1989. After working in
several other firms, he founded KBK in 2002; among other honors,
he was named California Lawyer of the Year/Litigation in 2006.
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