NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – Unhappy iPhone users agreed to arbitrate any disputes, Apple and T-Mobile say in response to a class action lawsuit against them.
On Sept. 3, the companies filed a motion to compel arbitration of a New York lawsuit that claims there is a “significant security flaw” in iOS software that allowed iMessage correspondence and Facetime calls to be directed to and accessed by third parties.
“Plaintiffs attempt to assert claims in this litigation that they have contractually agreed to arbitrate rather than litigate in court,” the motion says.
“Moreover, they purport to bring these claims on behalf of a putative class, but they have also contractually agreed to waive any ability to participate in a class action. Plaintiffs’ cannot simply escape their contractual obligations.”
Within T-Mobile’s terms and conditions was an arbitration clause, the motion says.
“Plaintiffs were notified of a simple process they could follow to opt out of the arbitration agreement and class action waiver, but they did not do so,” the motion says.
T-Mobile is accused of marketing and selling iPhone-compatible SIM cards while failing to disclose its practice of recycling phone numbers linked to SIM cards and selling those cards without requiring prior users to disassociate their Apple IDs from the phone numbers.