When an 11-year old girls' iPod exploded, Apple UK agreed to refund the purchase price to the girl's father in exchange for a confidentiality agreement that threatened a lawsuit if the family ever disclosed the settlement terms or even its existence. This, according to Ken Stanborough, the girl's father, who told his story to The Times of London.

According to Mr. Stanborough, the story began when he dropped his daughter Ellie's iPod touch and it began making a hissing sound. "I could feel it getting hotter in my hand," he said, "and I thought I could see vapour."

Mr. Stanborough then threw the iPod out of his back door, where "within 30 seconds there was a pop, a big puff of smoke and it went 10 feet in the air."

In the States, this would usually result in some form of litigation where the victim of the exploding device would seek hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) from Apple for the trauma associated with such an ordeal. Being English, and in England, Mr. Stanborough instead asked for a refund.

That process involved a long phone call where he was passed from department to department, and eventually talked to a local Apple UK executive who offered him the refund he was requesting, and sent him an agreement to sign. That agreement included the confidentiality clause, which The Times referred to as a gagging order.

The gagging order angered Mr. Stanborough, who was worried about signing away a "life sentence" where any even accidental mention of the incident could land him and his family in court.

"They’re putting a life sentence on myself, my daughter and Ellie's mum, not to say anything to anyone. If we inadvertently did say anything, no matter what, they would take litigation against us. I thought that was absolutely appalling. We didn't ask for compensation, we just asked for our money back."

So, Mr. Stanborough threw away the letter and told his story to an English newspaper with a global circulation.

We should point out that this is only Mr. Stanborough's side of the story, and the incident of the exploding iPod touch is alleged only. It also involves being dropped, which goes beyond proper use of an iPod, though we would hazard that it wasn't the first iPod to be so dropped.

At the same time, however, we should point out that Apple has had to recall laptop and iPod batteries, and there have been scattered reports for several years of a very small number of various iPod models that have exploded or caught fire over the years.

Our artist rendition of what an exploding iPod touch might look like