The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed a putative class action lawsuit against Apple, which accused the company of "allegedly deceptive representations about its iCloud data storage plans."
It was filed by an Apple customer named Lisa Bodenburg who purchased a 200GB iCloud+ data storage plan. The plaintiff accused the company of providing less iCloud storage than it promised.
Bodenburg expected that the 200GB storage would build upon the existing 5GB storage Apple offers for free to its customers. However, she assumed Apple had shortchanged her and only provided 200GB of total storage instead of 205GB.
The case between Bodenburg and Apple, Inc. was previously dismissed by a U.S. District Court in San Francisco in May 2024, and the Court of Appeals upheld the decision in a 3-0 ruling.
According to the higher US Court, a "reasonable customer" would not be deceived by Apple"s statements. Bodenburg"s legal theory is based on a single statement in the iCloud Storage Agreement that Apple allocates 5GB of free storage capacity to all users, who can buy “[a]dditional storage” by subscribing to one of the three iCloud+ plans, the court said (via Reuters).
The language obligates Apple to offer iCloud+ subscribers "incremental" or "supplemental" storage in addition to the free 5GB storage they already have. The higher US court further said:
Apple’s statements are “not false and deceptive merely because [they] may be ‘unreasonably misunderstood by an insignificant and unrepresentative segment’” of consumers.
The US Court also cited examples of previously dismissed cases based on "similar unreasonable assumptions." A lawsuit was filed against Diet Dr Pepper, based on the assumption that it would aid in weight loss. Similarly, another case against luxury lip balm maker Fresh, Inc. claimed that its net-weight statement failed to convey that its dispenser design left 25% of the product inaccessible.
Apple is no stranger to legal battles, with Batterygate and MacBook keyboard controversy being prominent incidents on the list. More recently, the company faced a class-action lawsuit alleging false advertising over Apple Intelligence.
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