Data-Use Class Action|Against Apple Dismissed

SAN JOSE (CN) - An iPhone user on Wednesday dropped his federal class action accusing Apple of concealing a defect that jacked up data use.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte dismissed Thomas Palmer's case with prejudice, and ordered each side to pay its own legal costs.

Whyte granted Apple's motion to dismiss in May, but gave Palmer time to amend the complaint to address its deficiencies, including what misrepresentations Apple made to consumers, who made them, and how the consumers relied upon them.

"The complaint is not adequate in my view, although I think it is pretty easily correctable," Whyte said during the May hearing.

Palmer's attorney Christopher Pitoun said after the hearing that he was "looking forward to amending the complaint" but apparently did not.

Palmer claimed the iPhone 5 had a defect which caused consumers to rack up large amounts of data use on their cellphone plans even when connected to Wi-Fi.

He says Apple knew about the problem but hid it from consumers for the two years it took resolve the issue.

"Through this entire time period, Apple materially omitted and failed to disclose the defect to consumers," he said in the complaint. "By omitting this material information, consumers were charged hefty fees for data they did not intend to use and had sought not to use, because they had initiated the connections through their Wi-Fi networks to avoid such charges."

Whyte told Pitoun he had to specify how Palmer relied upon certain assertions which turned out to be either misleading or false, a key test under the California Consumer Protection Act.

Emails to Palmer's legal team were not returned.

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