Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), on Thursday, gained great respite from a potentially explosive consumer lawsuit. US District Judge William Alsup, in his judgment in San Francisco dismissed the class-action lawsuit due to lack of ‘convincing’ evidence establishing alleged fraudulent sale of defective Macbook laptop computers.
Consumers Uriel Marcus and Benedict Verceles had alleged in a lawsuit that Apple Inc, despite knowing that logic boards in Macbook Laptop computers were defective, had sold them. Additionally, they alleged that these laptops had a standard life-cycle of two years, beyond which they failed.
Judgment favors Apple Inc.
Judge Alsup in his statement remarked that, the plaintiffs had failed to provide pertinent evidence in favor of their allegations. Much of their evidence was ‘affirmative representations,’ the judge concluded. The duo had cited as evidence, complaints made by various consumers at forums as well as Apple’s forums. Alternately, they had all cited Apple’s marketing material that stated the Macbook laptops were ‘state of the art.’
Alsup remarked that, there lacked conclusive evidence to show that Apple’s logic boards were ‘unfit’ for standard functions; or that their quality lacked even minimal standards. Besides, the Judge noted that the complainants had been to use the computers for periods of 18 months as well as two years, respectively.
The lawsuit was filed as a class-action. Judge Alsup directed the plaintiffs to rectify the status, and amend their lawsuit following the ruling.
However, both Apple Inc and the plaintiffs’ lawyer Omar Rosales, have yet to respond to the ruling.
Separately, Apple Inc. continues to fight a lawsuit for sale of the MacBook Pro laptop series dating back to 2011. The lawsuit alleges that the laptop series had defective graphic cards which led to distortions in the screen display as well as system failures.
For Apple Inc., this ruling could well set the roadmap for similar consumer lawsuits; though it cannot be denied that MacBook Pro sold in 2011 did show high incidence of faulty and distorted screen display.
