Court rejects Apple Inc’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) bid to dismiss data privacy suit

Northern, WI 03/10/2013 (avauncer) –In a major blow to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:APL), a federal court rejected the company’s submission in which it had requested to dismiss the privacy lawsuit claiming the iPhone maker inappropriately collected data and shared customers’ personal information. US District Judge Lucy Koh said that Apple failed over an order to present requisite documents.

Koh further stated that she was ‘disturbed’ to know that in its bid to seek dismissal of the case, Apple had been untrustworthy as it relied on documents that should have been presented to lawyers in the first instance.

Terming the firm’s behavior ‘unacceptable,’ Koh expressed “the court cannot rely on Apple’s representations about its compliance with its discovery obligations.”

Apple’s lawyer Ashlie Beringer had said during a hearing on February 28 that the firm had already presented all the requisite documents related to the matter.

A claim that the Apple executives had no direct involvement in the data collection is “surprising in light of the e-mail showing that the then Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself ordered that Apple software engineers immediately design and release a software update” to tackle the matter, Koh wrote in yesterday’s ruling.

Customers in their complaint made allegations that the iPhone maker gathered information on their locations through Apple devices, even after the geo-location feature was disabled. In the e-mail of former CEO Steve Jobs that Koh referred, the firm’s ex-CEO directed executives to fix a ‘bug’ that overturned users’ setting of the geo-location feature, as per the ruling.

In the ruling, the judge stated that the mobile giant can’t file another motion to dismiss the lawsuit until the court is contented that Apple complied with obligations.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock was up 0.26 percent to close at $431.72