While Apple  works to get a few glitches ironed out in the graphical displays of some of their 27" iMacs, a judge in California cuts the company a break with an even earlier class action based complaint regarding their monitors.

Almost a year ago to the day of the dismissal, Aram Hovsepian filed a class-action lawsuit seeking $5 million for himself and users suffering from a similar complaint as his. According to Neil Hughes at AppleInsider, the plaintiff purchased his computer, an iMac G5, in October of 2006; less than two years later, Hovsepian alleged that vertical lines were appearing on his graphical display rendering his computer worthless. He further went on to claim Apple knew of the defect and took no steps to rectify the situation, though he apparently overreached in seeking to include every iMac purchaser in the United States in his suit.

A couple weeks back, that's exactly what the judge in the case, Jeremy Fogel, ruled, finding the "class" to which Hovsepian claimed to be filing for indeterminate, including those with as well as those without similar issues. Apparently Hovsepian either has received bad advice from his lawyer or himself has a fool for a client, being given two opportunities to amend his suit and taking advantage of neither of them.

This was no doubt of some relief to Apple, who found themselves plagued with unrelated delays in shipments of the new 27" iMacs for problems concerning flickering or discolored displays. While it's definitely good news to get out from under a $5 million lawsuit, Apple users are known to be high maintenance types, and malfunctioning monitors aren't likely to win Cupertino any hearts.