For a second time, a California federal court judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by three Apple customers alleging the tech giant falsely advertised the storage capacity of its iPhones and iPads.
The plaintiffs claimed that despite marketing Apple products running on iOS 8 as featuring 16 GB of storage space, anywhere from 18.1 to 23.1 percent of this capacity (or 2.9 to 3.7 GB) was used by the operating system and therefore not available for personal storage. Had they known this, they would not have upgraded to iOS 8 or would not have purchased the 16 GB products, the plaintiffs told the court.
In addition to not meeting their expectations, Apple exploited the discrepancy between the represented and available capacity for its own gain by selling cloud storage capacity through its iCloud service, the plaintiffs said, charging between $0.99 and $29.99 per month for a subscription.
Apple moved to dismiss the alleged violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL), False Advertising Law (FAL) and Consumers Legal Remedies Act (CLRA), pointing out that its website, advertisements, product packaging and promotional materials clarified that the “actual formatted capacity” of its devices would be “less” than the full 16 GB. As a result, no reasonable consumer could expect the entire 16 GB would be available for personal use, the defendant argued.
U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila agreed. He granted the motion to dismiss with leave to amend, however, giving the plaintiffs a second chance—to no avail.
“The [Second Amendment Complaint (SAC)] asserts the same UCL, FAL and CLRA claims based upon the same core allegation: that Apple represented on its website, advertisements, product packaging and other promotional materials that Plaintiffs’ devices came with 16 GB of storage space,” the court said.
The plaintiffs also alleged that iOS 8 uses between 600 MG and 1.3 GB more space than iOS 7 and that no reasonable consumer could reasonably anticipate this increase. The iOS 8 update also included “unnecessary and unwanted applications” that could not be erased and that used even more storage space, they argued.
Noting that the question of whether a business practice is deceptive generally presents a question of fact not suited for resolution on a motion to dismiss, Judge Davila said this case was one of the times the court could conclude as a matter of law that members of the public were not likely to be deceived.
“The SAC includes verbatim the allegations the court previously found were insufficient to state a plausible claim of fraud under any of the consumer protection statutes,” the court wrote. “Plaintiffs still fail to explain how much storage space they actually expected iOS 8 would use, the basis for this expectation or how any of Apple’s alleged misrepresentations or omissions created this expectation.”
Nor did the plaintiffs explain how the inability to delete preinstalled apps shaped their expectation of how much storage space iOS 8 would consume, the court added.
“[N]o reasonable consumer could have read Apple’s disclaimer and expected that all of the 16 GB would be available for personal use on their devices because the average consumer would know and expect that their Apple devices come pre-installed with an operating system and applications,” the court said.
“Furthermore, no consumer could have read Apple’s disclaimer and reasonably expected that iOS 8 would not consume a substantial amount of storage; the disclosure simply does not imply anything about the amount of storage iOS 8 would or would not consume. In sum, Plaintiffs have failed to plead facts that would make it plausible that they reasonably expected iOS 8 not to consume a substantial amount of storage.”
To read the order in Orshan v. Apple Inc., click here.
Why it matters: Having dismissed the plaintiffs’ first complaint, the court had little trouble reaching the same result with the amended complaint, which relied on the allegations the court had previously found were insufficient to state a plausible claim of fraud under any of the consumer protection statutes. As Apple disclosed that the “actual formatted capacity” of its devices would be less than the stated capacity, the court characterized the plaintiffs’ allegations as simply “mistaken expectations.”