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USA | Apple will pay $20M to settle Watch battery swelling suit, ‘denies wrongdoing’ (techcrunch.com)

submitted 6 months ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/legalnews@lemmy.zip

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Apple has agreed to pay $20 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit over battery swelling on the Apple Watch. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2019, the suit alleges that the problem affected the first four Apple Watch models.

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[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Although in practice American fines are a joke compared to EU ones, companies are willing to pay more to avoid having to admit to liability, since to them there's reputational value in being able to deny wrongdoing in perpetuity, and instead treat fines and settlements as a cost of doing business.

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 months ago

It's typical US short term gratification born from capitalism. Like I mentioned, $20M is not even a slap on the wrist.

Class actions lawsuits in most cases are on contingency (meaning the law firm covers most of the fees related to the case and get the majority of the payout if they win). So people that go for class action lawsuits are not doing it for the monetary gain, they do it to punish the company and make them suffer.

By design these settlements make a nice payout for the lawyers, while allowing denying of wrongdoing for the companies to guarantee the next class action in the future. Everyone wins except the consumer.