NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) – Class action lawyers have dismissed claims against T-Mobile, the company with which prospective class members signed an arbitration agreement.
That leaves lawyers at Oved & Oved litigating against only Apple as they claim a “significant security flaw” in iOS software allowed iMessage correspondence and Facetime calls to be directed to and accessed by third parties.
On Sept. 3, T-Mobile and Apple filed a motion to compel arbitration, relying on the agreement signed with T-Mobile.
But last week, the lawyers withdrew claims against T-Mobile and filed opposition to Apple’s arbitration request.
“Apple contends that even though it is not even mentioned in T-Mobile’s terms and conditions, it still can use its status as a non-signatory to (the plaintiffs) purported ‘agreements’ with T-Mobile to force their claims in this putative consumer class action into arbitration under the doctrine of equitable estoppel,” plaintiffs lawyers wrote on Oct. 23.
“Yet, a thorough review of well-settled state law in both New York and Florida concerning the doctrine of equitable estoppel reveals that Apple’s position is wholly devoid of merit.”
T-Mobile was 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.
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.