Sunday, December 15, 2024
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Apple must face lawsuit involving a janitorial service’s canceled contract

Apple can’t avoid a lawsuit in which it’s accused of canceling a contract with a janitorial service because the owner is a woman, reports Bloomberg.

In a “tentative” ruling in California state court in San Jose, Judge Cynthia Lie ruled that the conduct alleged in the lawsuit — which includes an Apple manager referring to the service’s female owner, Darla Drendel, as a “typical woman in business” who “thinks she is assertive, but she’s just pushy” — was enough to allow the case to proceed to trial, the article adds.

The original complaint, Industrial Janitorial Service v. Apple Inc, was lodged in a California state court in 2019 and accused the Cupertino-based company of sex bias in its decision to terminate its contract with the plaintiff. Here’s the backstory:

In 2013, Apple signed a contract with Industrial Janitorial Service (IJS) to clean around 40 Apple stores for US$215,000 a month. However, by year’s end, the number of stores was reduced to five and the contract eventually canceled.

Around mid-2013 managers of some Apple retail stores purportedly learned that the service was selling some of the unpaid invoices to a third-party broker. Apple usually made the payments at a delay of three to four months.

In 2017, Apple was informed of $1.5 million of unpaid invoices, but it purportedly terminated the contract instead.

IJS’s website describes the company as a “family owned and operated nationwide corporation” with hundred of clients and which has been servicing businesses for over 46 years.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.