According to a class-action lawsuit filed against Amazon.com Inc on Tuesday, by a user of its Kindle electronic reader, the device’s separately-sold cover can cause a breakage to its screen, thereby hampering its operations.

In the lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the Western District of Washington, the plaintiff - a Seattle resident named Matthew Geise – has sought to represent all Kindle 2 or Kindle DX owners, over an allegedly defective Kindle cover designed by Amazon. While Kindle 2 is a successor to the 2007-debutant e-reader, the DX is a bigger version designed for a better reading of newspapers.

Alleging that the covers designed and sold by Amazon to protect Kindle often crack the screens of the device, owing to pressure on the hinge, Geise – who owned the $359-priced Kindle 2 - said that cover of the Kindle that he purchased began cracking within three months.

In his complaint, Geise said that a customer service supervisor at Amazon accepted the fact that such cracking was a “common problem,” which would not be covered by a warranty. Geise was asked to pay $200 to get the e-reader replaced.

Geise’s complaint is supported by quotes from a number of consumer complaint postings on the Internet that corroborate the fact that the hinge on the Kindle cover puts pressure on the e-reader’s screen and damages it!