Another day, another (revived) lawsuit. A California appeals court has revived a lawsuit accusing Apple of restricting independent iPhone repairs and inflating repair costs, finding consumers had adequately pleaded an unfair competition claim, reports the Courthouse News Service.
The plaintiffs are Jesse Granato and Janice Zarad. According to the lawsuit, in 2021, Apple employees told the plaintiffs that using third-party services for their cracked iPhone screens would void their warranties, forcing them to pay higher prices directly to Apple. The lawsuit claims the tech giant restricts access to parts, tools, manuals, and software to make outside repairs difficult and expensive.
They sued Apple in 2022, accusing it of inflating independent repair costs by withholding parts, tools, manuals and software and conditioning warranties on using authorized repair shops.
A Santa Clara Superior Court judge initially dismissed the case, but California’s Sixth Appellate District unanimously revived the lawsuit, sending it back to the superior court for further proceedings. Apple has not been found liable.\
“As pleaded, Apple’s practices substantially injure consumers by allowing Apple to exact inflated payments for repairs or to increase demand for new products by incentivizing replacement over repair,” acting presiding Associate Justice Cynthia Lie wrote in the unanimous decision. “Plaintiffs rely on reasonable inferences derived from Apple’s alleged conduct in combination with the relationship between market factors — competition, demand, and supply — and pricing.”
What’s more, as noted by the Courthouse News Service, the plaintiffs did not identify any meaningful benefit provided by Apple’s repair policies that outweighed the harm they caused, Lie wrote.
“Consumers needing out-of-warranty repairs have no means of avoiding market wide pricing dynamics,” she continued. “At the pleading stage, plaintiffs’ allegations suffice.”
The panel found that the plaintiffs had adequately pleaded an unfair competition claim and remanded the case to the lower court last week.
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