TRENTON, N.J. (Legal Newsline) – Samsung is relying on a tried-and-true argument that sends lawsuits to arbitration as it fights a proposed class action regarding the performance of its phones.
The company filed a motion to invoke an arbitration clause and dismiss the lawsuit from New Jersey federal court on May 20, pointing at a November decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that affirmed the clause.
“(T)he print materials provided to Plaintiffs with their… phone purchases establish – independently and certainly in combination – Plaintiffs had reasonably conspicuous notice of contract terms sufficient to support mutual assent to the arbitration agreement,” the Third Circuit wrote.
Though the phones at issue are different from that case, the packaging and other materials are the same, Samsung argues. It provided notice of its arbitration agreement on the outside of the boxes of the phones, as well as inside and in an electronic activation process customers are required to complete before using their phones.
“Plaintiffs accordingly agreed through the purchase and use of their phones that any dispute relating to those phones would be resolved through individual arbitration,” the company wrote.
Lawyers at Seeger Weiss in New Jersey and Philadelphia sued Samsung on March 11 on behalf of three clients who hope to represent a class of consumers. The case centers on Samsung's Game Optimizing Service app on S10, S20, S21 and S22 models.
The GOS app "throttles" processing power to extend battery life.
"Samsung's deception is quite simple: in an effort to remain competitive, Samsung promises to deliver both better, faster performance and better, longer battery life," the lawsuit says.
"However, knowing it cannot deliver as promised, Samsung intentionally programmed its devices to cheat benchmark apps, and to create false perceptions regarding the speed, performance and battery life of the devices."
Benchmark apps are performance-measuring tools used by reviewers and consumers to test speed and performance.
"Samsung's throttling manipulation was intended to address a defect in the design of its devices: the fact that the devices' batteries lacked the capacity and power delivery to keep up with the demands placed upon them by Samsung's hardware and software," the suit says.