Apple on Monday scored a court victory, when a judge overseeing a long-running antitrust lawsuit decertified the case. The lawsuit, which was first filed in December 2011, accuses Apple of a monopoly over the iPhone app ecosystem by not allowing customers to download apps from sources outside of the App Store.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has presided over the case since 2012, decertified the case, saying the plaintiffs made “alarming” errors in calculating the class size. The judge said the expert hired by the plaintiffs was “not qualified,” used unreliable methods, and “did not reliably apply his methods,” making his testimony irrelevant. As the plaintiffs failed to provide a methodology to match Apple ID accounts to consumers, Gonzalez Rogers said they are not able to prove damages on a classwide basis.
The case can no longer move forward as a class action lawsuit now that it has been decertified. Now, anyone that wishes to sue Apple over the same thing will be forced to file an individual lawsuit.
Apple (of course) was pleased with the court’s decision:
We’re pleased the Court recognized the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate the alleged harm to consumers and decertified the class. We continue to invest significantly to make the App Store a safe and trusted place for users to discover apps and a great business opportunity for developers.
As you might expect, the plaintiffs plan to appeal the decertification. In an email to Reuters, Mark Rifkin, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said “we are of course disappointed” with the decision, and said his legal team is reviewing their next legal steps to protect consumers “harmed by Apple’s unlawful App Store monopoly.”
Judge Gonzalez Rogers made her ruling after one of Apple’s expert found “alarming” errors in the plaintiffs’ model. That included one instance where, named plaintiff Robert Pepper and supposed claimant “Rob Pepper” were designated two different people a matching home address and credit card information.
Also lumped together by the plaintiff’s models were more than 40,000 payment records for people who had the same first name, “Kim,” but who otherwise had no other matching information.
