(VOVWORLD) - Apple on Wednesday lost a bid to block a mass London lawsuit worth up to 2 billion USD which accuses the tech giant of hiding defective batteries in millions of iPhones.
 An Apple logo is pictured outside an Apple store in Lille, France, September 13, 2023. (Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq) |
The lawsuit was brought by British consumer champion Justin Gutmann on behalf of around 24 million iPhone users in the United Kingdom.
Gutmann is seeking damages from Apple on their behalf of up to 1.9 billion USD plus interest. His lawyers argued Apple concealed issues with batteries in certain phone models by "throttling" them with software updates and installed a power management tool which limited performance. Apple, however, said the lawsuit was “baseless” and strongly denied batteries in iPhones were defective, apart from in a small number of iPhone 6s models for which it offered free battery replacements.
The company sought to get the case thrown out of court, but the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) said Gutmann’s case can proceed in a written ruling on Wednesday.
The CAT did, however, say there was “a lack of clarity and specificity” in Gutmann’s case which needed to be resolved before any trial.