“Apple Inc said it discovered that the lead consumer in a $1 billion group antitrust lawsuit over the iPod didn’t buy a device in the time period covered by the case, which could derail a trial now under way,” Karen Gullo reports for Bloomberg.
“Bill Isaacson, Apple’s attorney, told U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers that plaintiff Marianna Rosen’s iPod was purchased in July 2009, three months after a deadline for iPod owners to be included in the case. The case, filed in 2005, is over claims that Apple sought to thwart rival music stores to maintain a monopoly over digital players,” Gullo reports. “‘I am concerned that I don’t have a plaintiff,’ Rogers said in court today while the jury was on a break in the third day of trial in Oakland, California. ‘That’s a problem.'”
“Bonny Sweeney, Rosen’s attorney, told Rogers she hadn’t yet reviewed Apple’s claims. The only other named plaintiff in the case didn’t purchase an iPod during the period covered by the lawsuit, she said.,” Gullo reports. “A named plaintiff in a class action has to be an individual who was injured by the conduct being challenged in the lawsuit, said Vikram Amar, a law professor at University of California at Davis. Another person could take Rosen’s place as a named plaintiff under procedures approved by Rogers, he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Put a mannequin in there instead. It’d be fitting for a case such as this that’s been manufactured by lawyers for lawyers and hasn’t “injured” anybody.
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