Court documents in the Apple AirTag lawsuit include pictures of a note and potted plant left at Lauren Hughes's doorstep.
In California, a federal judge refused to throw out negligence and product liability claims against Apple. The claims allege that AirTags have made it easy for stalkers and abusers to track victims, leading to devastating and deadly consequences.
Last October, a class action complaint claimed that AirTags, priced at $29, have become the preferred tools of stalkers and abusers since their introduction in 2021, despite Apple's alleged claim of having protections against stalking.
According to the plaintiffs, a group of 38 individuals from California and other places including Canada, AirTags have consistently facilitated stalking incidents and have even been involved in some murders. As an example, the lead plaintiff, Lauren Hughes, shared a disturbing stalking incident involving a man who used an AirTag to leave a potted plant and a Post-it note at her doorstep in Texas after a breakup, with photos as evidence.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria focused on negligence and risk-benefit product liability claims brought by several individuals, including John Kirkman, Àine O’Neill, and Hollye Humphreys, who are residents of California.
In summary, the claims by Kirkman, O’Neill, and Humphreys were not dismissed, but the claims by Roger Derick Hembd and Pamela Luan, both from California, were dismissed with the opportunity to make changes. The judge stated that it was not clear enough that Apple's alleged breach caused Hembd's injuries, and Luan's allegations about the AirTag's role in the stalking were too vague.
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The remaining plaintiffs' claims were rejected for being inadequately described, but they were given the chance to make amendments, similar to Hembd and Luan.
Chhabria explained why he ruled in favor of some plaintiffs, even though it was a difficult decision.
He said, “Those plaintiffs claim that the problems with the AirTag’s safety features were significant when they were stalked, and that those safety issues caused their injuries. This ruling explains why those claims survive, even though it’s a close question. Apple may ultimately be right that California law did not require it to do more to diminish the ability of stalkers to use AirTags effectively, but that determination cannot be made at this early stage,” the judge said.
Chhabria said John Kirkman's claims could move forward because, if their claims are true, they involve some of the reported issues with AirTags. Kirkman alleged that design flaws in AirTags made him unaware that he was being stalked when his estranged wife tracked him and their daughter down in 2022.
He claims that, although he tried to keep the location of his new home secret from his estranged wife, she still found the house and harassed him and his daughter. The complaint suggests that she located the home using the AirTag, but it was not until the day after the incident that Kirkman first received a device notification. Also, both Kirkman and his daughter claim they got device notifications, but neither of them understood what the notifications meant, indicating issues with the clarity of the notification text. Finally, it allegedly took several days for Kirkman to find the AirTag and remove it. If the sounds had been louder or more distinctive, or if Kirkman could trigger the sound himself, he could have found it earlier.
Ireland’s Àine O’Neill had aspirations of a TV and movie career in Hollywood. She moved there in 2021, but just a year later her life was completely disrupted by a stalker who tracked her car’s movements, leading her to move back across the Atlantic Ocean.
Upon hearing a sound coming from her car, but not from inside the car, she concluded the AirTag was likely underneath the vehicle. Then she and her roommate both searched for the device, but neither could track it down. Although O’Neill could not locate the AirTag, her phone showed her everything the AirTag owner could see about her: “where she worked, where she parked her car, her home address, and everywhere she had been.” So she “texted with Apple,” and Apple “confirmed the existence of the AirTag but informed her that they were unable to disable [the] tag without physical possession.”
Similarly to the Kirkman case, Chhabria found the argument about the design flaw enough to survive the motion to dismiss. He wrote that it was evident that the screen notification did not arrive until after the stalker had discovered a great deal about O’Neill, but that was not the only issue.
“Several claimed issues with the product—inadequate noise volume and imprecise tracking—prevented O’Neill from ever finding the product to trace it back to her stalker,” the border said. “Another claimed issue—inability to disable the device remotely—prevented O’Neill from being free of the stalking while she still had her car.”
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Similarly, Hollye Humphreys’ claims that her ex-husband hid an AirTag in her car “implicated” a “number of the asserted defects” in the product, Chhabria said.
“She claims that she received device notifications for three days, but she ignored them because ‘she was unfamiliar with AirTags and did not know what the alert meant.’ On the third day, Humphreys received the notification while she was ‘off work,’ and ‘this time’ she ‘was able to activate the beeping sound,’ which she used to locate the device,” the judge went on. “And it was only through her online research that she discovered how to reveal the last four digits of the AirTag owner’s phone number and was able to confirm that it was her ex-husband. A number of the asserted defects are implicated in Humphreys’s story: the sound alerts did not begin on their own, and the sporadic and unclear notifications prolonged the stalking.”
Chhabria concluded by saying that “discovery may move forward immediately” in Kirkman, O’Neill and Humphreys’ cases and that if any remaining defendant wishes to amend their claims they must due so within 21 days of the order.
The plaintiffs and Apple, in a brief case management statement following the judge’s order, said they had “no updates” since the last such statement. They added, however, that both sides are “reviewing” the order on the motion to dismiss.
Read the directive here.