It’s not just the US Department of Justice setting its sights on Apple this year. Since the DOJ announced its lawsuit last week, Apple has been hit with a wave of new lawsuits from consumers accusing the company of monopolizing the smartphone market.
These consumers say Apple “inflated the cost of its products through anticompetitive conduct.”
More legal trouble from Apple
As reported by Reuters on Monday, Apple has been hit with “at least three proposed class actions” since Friday in New Jersey and California. The lawsuits “mirror the Justice Department’s claims that Apple violated U.S. antitrust law” and could ultimately represent millions of consumers across the United States.
Much like the DOJ’s claims, the lawsuits say that Apple’s tactics around messaging, digital wallets, the App Store, and more have suppressed competition in the smartphone market.
Apple’s friends at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro are representing one of the new class action lawsuits. This law firm has successfully taken on Apple in a number of different class action lawsuits over the years. Most notably, the firm handled the $560 million class action Apple Books price fixing lawsuit against Apple. Hagens Berman is also behind a class action lawsuit against Apple related to iCloud limits, which was filed earlier this month.
“We are pleased that the DOJ (Department of Justice) agrees with our approach,” Berman said in a statement to Reuters. You can find the full lawsuit here.
As for whether these class action lawsuits go anywhere remains to be seen. Interestingly, Reuters points to a 2022 study that found “private antitrust class actions can sometimes go farther than government cases.”
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