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>"Customer safety remains our highest priority," said CEO Iñaki Berroeta. It's fun to imagine a world where a lie like this could be a legal liability. I mean

>"Customer safety remains our highest priority," said CEO Iñaki Berroeta. It's fun to imagine a world where a lie like this could be a legal liability. I mean an actual court case, where evidence is brought and the claim is tested. "Is customer safety a higher priority than shareholder value?" and "why don't you support old devices" and then Samsung would need to produce internal evidence to try to make their case. Nothing like that will ever happen, but I can dream.

neom 11mo ago
Is this puffery or not? I don't know, IANAL, but maybe? I checked and Puffery is legal in Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery
- NooneAtAll3 11mo ago
  > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery literally the definition from there > Puffery is undue or exaggerated praise talking about yourself is not "praise" I wonder if it can go as false advertizing, tho...
  - nemomarx 11mo ago
    note "typically produced by the seller" if you said your product is the best in the world that could be directed at yourself and still be puffery. advertising is expected and usually allowed to be inaccurate
  - cortesoft 11mo ago
    It isn't talking about yourself, it is talking about your product
- NuclearPM 11mo ago
  You don’t need to tell people that you are not a lawyer. That is the default.
  - ssl-3 11mo ago
    We don't need to do the vast majority of the things we do here in these pages. We do them anyway.
goldeneye13_ 11mo ago
Chances are there will be securities fraud case. Where they will refer to statements such as these and the fact that it wasn’t really the case. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
- alwa 11mo ago
  I don’t follow. In this case, the law required everyone to do what they did: provide an update, warn subscribers to update, and eventually drop devices that chose not to heed the warnings. > Under the federal Emergency Service Call Determination, all operators must block handsets that can't complete Triple Zero calls if they remain unpatched for 28-35 days after the first warning – a rule TPG says it followed. How would you even begin to pin down what “customer safety” means here? Isn’t it very much in the spirit of safety to say “if it can call at all, it must be able to place an emergency call; if it can’t place an emergency call on the current emergency calling scheme, you have to prohibit all other calling too”? Plus, safety from unpatched devices on the customers’ network is safety too, right? Would it be “safer” to force the system update onto handsets without letting the subscriber decide? Plus, just because something is a “priority” doesn’t mean you’re good at it…
  - goldeneye13_ 11mo ago
    What I was saying is that at least in the US any bad thing that happens to a company can be treated as securities fraud. Company had security breach but they said they follow best practices. There likely will be a lawsuit saying that they mislead investors. Not saying it makes sense more pointing out that companies often do get sued for statements they make.
FridayoLeary 11mo ago
I think it would be a worse world then the one we live in today where we allow some leeway for exaggerations. As it is everyone and everything are overly careful of saying anything that might have legal implications. One outcome of that are new laws that are almost incomprehensible.
WheatMillington 11mo ago
It's hard to understand how this is Samsung's liability. The device was extremely old (nearly 10 years), and an update was available nonetheless. The user had received multiple warnings and notifications that this update needs to be applied for emergency calls to continue working.
- stavros 11mo ago
  When updating devices that old almost certainly means that they become unusable, I can't fault the person for not updating. I've learned not to apply updates any more, in the spirit of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it".
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- Sat_P 11mo ago
  If a phone functions properly with a SIM card (i.e gets good signal/reception), then in my opinion the user should be able to call emergency services.
  - MoonWalk 11mo ago
    Exactly. I'm mystified as to why this is not addressed anywhere in the article. Did the phone work to make phone calls or not? If yes, then a user should not be expected to guess that he can't call emergency services. And WHY could he not call emergency services if the phone worked for other calls? Shoddy reporting and, it sounds like, a shoddy system.
    - pfych 11mo ago
      Australia shut down its entire 3G network, which a lot of devices used for emergency calls. A lot of phones worked with 4G still but did not support using 4G for emergency calls. The telco's solution was to sell new phones to people, which a lot of people didn't do. Apparently all of these phones that still worked were flagged and blocked from using 4G but this apparently wasn't the case.
sharpy 11mo ago
If it becomes a liability, wouldn't the onus be on the network operators for failing to support devices sold within X years?

neom 11mo ago

Is this puffery or not? I don't know, IANAL, but maybe? I checked and Puffery is legal in Australia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery

NooneAtAll3 11mo ago
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery literally the definition from there > Puffery is undue or exaggerated praise talking about yourself is not "praise" I wonder if it can go as false advertizing, tho...
- nemomarx 11mo ago
  note "typically produced by the seller" if you said your product is the best in the world that could be directed at yourself and still be puffery. advertising is expected and usually allowed to be inaccurate
- cortesoft 11mo ago
  It isn't talking about yourself, it is talking about your product
NuclearPM 11mo ago
You don’t need to tell people that you are not a lawyer. That is the default.
- ssl-3 11mo ago
  We don't need to do the vast majority of the things we do here in these pages. We do them anyway.

goldeneye13_ 11mo ago

Chances are there will be securities fraud case. Where they will refer to statements such as these and the fact that it wasn’t really the case. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...

alwa 11mo ago
I don’t follow. In this case, the law required everyone to do what they did: provide an update, warn subscribers to update, and eventually drop devices that chose not to heed the warnings. > Under the federal Emergency Service Call Determination, all operators must block handsets that can't complete Triple Zero calls if they remain unpatched for 28-35 days after the first warning – a rule TPG says it followed. How would you even begin to pin down what “customer safety” means here? Isn’t it very much in the spirit of safety to say “if it can call at all, it must be able to place an emergency call; if it can’t place an emergency call on the current emergency calling scheme, you have to prohibit all other calling too”? Plus, safety from unpatched devices on the customers’ network is safety too, right? Would it be “safer” to force the system update onto handsets without letting the subscriber decide? Plus, just because something is a “priority” doesn’t mean you’re good at it…
- goldeneye13_ 11mo ago
  What I was saying is that at least in the US any bad thing that happens to a company can be treated as securities fraud. Company had security breach but they said they follow best practices. There likely will be a lawsuit saying that they mislead investors. Not saying it makes sense more pointing out that companies often do get sued for statements they make.

FridayoLeary 11mo ago

I think it would be a worse world then the one we live in today where we allow some leeway for exaggerations. As it is everyone and everything are overly careful of saying anything that might have legal implications. One outcome of that are new laws that are almost incomprehensible.

WheatMillington 11mo ago

It's hard to understand how this is Samsung's liability. The device was extremely old (nearly 10 years), and an update was available nonetheless. The user had received multiple warnings and notifications that this update needs to be applied for emergency calls to continue working.

stavros 11mo ago
When updating devices that old almost certainly means that they become unusable, I can't fault the person for not updating. I've learned not to apply updates any more, in the spirit of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it".
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
Sat_P 11mo ago
If a phone functions properly with a SIM card (i.e gets good signal/reception), then in my opinion the user should be able to call emergency services.
- MoonWalk 11mo ago
  Exactly. I'm mystified as to why this is not addressed anywhere in the article. Did the phone work to make phone calls or not? If yes, then a user should not be expected to guess that he can't call emergency services. And WHY could he not call emergency services if the phone worked for other calls? Shoddy reporting and, it sounds like, a shoddy system.
  - pfych 11mo ago
    Australia shut down its entire 3G network, which a lot of devices used for emergency calls. A lot of phones worked with 4G still but did not support using 4G for emergency calls. The telco's solution was to sell new phones to people, which a lot of people didn't do. Apparently all of these phones that still worked were flagged and blocked from using 4G but this apparently wasn't the case.

sharpy 11mo ago

If it becomes a liability, wouldn't the onus be on the network operators for failing to support devices sold within X years?