Hundreds of South Korean owners of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Note 7 smartphone on Monday filed their first class-action lawsuit here, with the number expected to rise every month.

Harvest Law, a local law firm which represents Note 7 buyers, filed a class-action lawsuit with the Seoul Central District Court, demanding Samsung pay each buyer about 500,000 won (about USD440) in damages for inconveniences they experienced in the recall process, according to local media reports.

It marked the country’s first Note 7-related lawsuit, in which the law firm collected 527 owners of the troubled Samsung device.

The number is forecast to rise as the law firm plans to collect Note 7 owners who will join the damages claim in the last week of every month online.

Note 7 owners here demanded compensation for waste of time and anxiety felt while using the fire-prone phone.

The owners claimed they visited retail stores four times to purchase the device at the very first, get battery checked, exchange the faulty phone with a replacement one and swap it with other smartphones in the end following the company’s decision to discontinue the model.

In the meantime, they were required to download a program that limits the battery capacity to 60 percent and to reinstall all of the applications for exchanged devices.

Samsung announced its global recall in early September, just two weeks after its debut as scores of the devices catching on fire or overheating were reported globally.

The South Korean tech behemoth finally decided to permanently end production and sales of the fire-prone device as more reports of overheating came even from replacement phones. (PNA/Xinhua)