I was laughing when I read Prof. Eszter Hargittai’s post: The dog ate my computer and other contemporary student excuses.  Now here’s a sequel: Lawsuit: Amazon Ate My Homework.

Justin D. Gawronski, a 17-year-old Michigan high school senior is suing Amazon for wiping out his annotated copy of Orwell’s 1984, reports the WSJ:

Gawronski, a member of his high school’s debate team, says he got a Kindle earlier this summer because he knew he’d be reading a lot of books for his Advanced Placement English class. “If there’s something that catches my eye as I am reading, I just place a note there” using the Kindle’s keyboard, he said. Those notes are useful, he said, because “every 100 pages we have to write a 1-page summary and reflection of everything that we read,” he said.

But on July 20, when Gawronski turned on his Kindle, he watched his copy of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” disappear right before his eyes. “It was a bit ironic,” he said.

The notes themselves did not get deleted, but they are kept in a separate file, and without the text they refer to they lost context. He wants to turn this case into a Class Action lawsuit to set a precedent.  He is p***d:

When you think that you own something and don’t own it – that’s not how it should be.

Gawronski is on his high school’s debate team, and while the WSJ article does not mention his future ambitions, I have a pretty safe bet:  Law School, Justin?