has anyone had a bloated battery that pushed the screen out and bent the cct boards inside rendering the phone useless?

Google

Gosh, 218,000 matches.

Now let's Google for "bloated battery" not including "iPhone".

bloated battery -iphone

Oh. 943,000 matches...

Before you took it apart, did you take it to an Apple store?

iphone 5c battery bloated after 1 year and 3 months. Phone never kept for over night charging and no unauthorised service has been done. The authorised service centre i.e. Maple located at santacruz East Mumbai, India returned the phone stating unauthorised service was done and repair cannot be done. Though in writing they have not confirmed it. Instead they have only mentioned that unit not repairable and to be returned.

I believe it was battery quality issue, not expected from Apple at least.

Ajit310 wrote:

I believe it was battery quality issue, not expected from Apple at least.

Okay.

Apple has produced only something like 10 million iPhone 5cs so a few issues are bound to pop up.

However, since someone not authorized by Apple to serviced it, they turned down repair.