CTVNEWS

Class action suit proposed against RIM after outage

The Canadian Press Published Wednesday, October 26, 2011 9:12PM EDT

A Research in Motion web page indicates problems with the BlackBerry netwrok, as shown in Ottawa, Wednesday Oct.12, 2011. (Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

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MONTREAL - BlackBerry users still fuming over a service outage earlier this month could be part of a proposed class-action lawsuit seeking refunds for the downtime.

Montreal-based law firm the Consumer Law Group Inc. says it has filed a nationwide class-action suit against the smartphone's developer, Research In Motion (TSX:RIM).

The lawsuit needs to be certified by a judge as a class action before it can go forward.

The suit claims that RIM failed to directly compensate BlackBerry users, who pay monthly data fees to wireless carriers.

Consumer Law Group claims that RIM also failed to arrange for service providers like Rogers (TSX:RCI.B), Bell (TSX:BCE) and Telus (TSX:T) to provide refunds.

The suit covers the BlackBerry outage which occurred around the world from Oct. 11 to Oct. 14, affecting some user emails, BlackBerry messenger service and Internet.