Settling a bet? I'd say it was more likely RacingSnake is a passenger who is digging for some gen, to put a case together that a starter failure should have been forseen, and that the delay they incurred is as a result of the airline's poor maintenance
. Hope you are not trying to do this!
In any case, starter failures are very rare. The V2500 is air driven, and as mentioned a bearing/clutch failure is most likely. Engineers can monitor for early signs of failure, in the AMP there is a task to check the starter's Mag Chip Detector, the frequency of this depends on the airline's CAA approved AMP - most likely at every A check.
If no debris is found during this check then there would have been no way to forsee a starter going U/S. Aircraft are very complicated machines, with lots of moving parts, stuff breaks all the time, sh*t happens.