It's easy to say "sue 'em" but quite another thing to want to gamble a large amount of money and time on something you may fail at.
I once had a phone charging socket fail on a phone (HTC Desire) and the manufacturer wanted £60 to fix it. I believed I was covered by UK consumer law; the company (Orange, now EE) disagreed. The question, then, was to decide whether to pay to get it fixed, or sue them. I decided that it would cost me a lot of money and time (off work etc) to get a maximum of £60 back, and that's assuming there's no loophole/exclusion the company could employ (blaming HTC, for example) and that it wasn't worth the effort.
I had a little look online and it seems there actually is more protection for UK consumers regarding "consequential damages" than I thought so that's one positive thing that's come out of this, for me at least. But also depending on how long ago JimBob bought the headphones and what he paid, even that may be of no use.
You’re right of course, I did have tongue in my cheek really. It’s going to be a real ballache to get any satisfaction and I dare say that one would be better off spending the sort of money it would take on some nice stax earspeakers.