KANSAS CITY – A pro se plaintiff is seeking $835,000 in damages against Cochlear Limited and Cochlear Americas over a hearing implant device he claims caused permanent numbness in his left ear rim.
Donald K. Alexander of Lee's Summit claims that the cochlear implant he received on Dec. 30, 2015, at Midwest Ear Institute in Kansas City is "no more effective than a $50 sound distorted amplifier."
He claims he was implanted with the Cochlear Nucleus C1522.
His suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on June 28, seeks damages over allegations of product liability, false advertising, consumer fraud and breach of implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose "in connection with a sound-distorting cochlear implant known to defendants to be totally incapable of transmitting coded undistorted sound waves involving extremely common high and medium frequency sound waves..."
He claims that the implant he received "profoundly" distorted sound involving TV, radio, music recordings and live music.
He further claims that he learned post-surgery that sound distortion affects primarily high and medium sound frequencies common to many human voices and to TV, radio, telephone and other recordings, and that such distortion might clear up in one to three years through a series of "additionally billed corrective and computerized sessions by reading aloud from recommended texts to 'train the brain.'"
"But for the...fraudulent marketing and false advertising, victim Alexander would never had agreed to said implanting and therefore would not have undergone unnecessary surgical pain and suffering connected with said cochlear implant, nor the permanent numbness of his left ear rim nor the surgical and hospital cochlear financial expenses, nor surgical removal risks, nor the inability to hear by telephone or to hear electronically generated sounds such as TV, radio and sound recordings," his complaint states.