The final hurdle preventing a Class Action being brought against Apple in the UK, was successfully jumped on the 12th March. The Competition Appeal Tribunal approved the revised Litigation Funding deal under which noted consumer champion Justin Gutmann sought to bring a Class action on behalf of up to 25 million UK customers.
It is alleged that owners of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus,6S, 6S Plus, SE, 7 and 7 Plus all had their phone batteries deliberately “throttled” by Apple to impact upon their performance. In so doing, unaware consumers either paid for replacement batteries, or purchased newer models earlier than needed.
Mr Gutmann argues that Apple effectively exploited their market dominance through their actions. Conversely, Apple say that the claim is “baseless”.
Interestingly however, Apple has recently settled 2 similar actions brought in the States of California and Arizona whereby they have commenced paying out in excess of £500m to claimants.
The claim in the UK is for sums in excess of up to £1.6billion, with a mean point of £853 million pounds, so do watch this space if you owned one of these older phones, you may be entitled to compensation