Lawyers for Apple on Friday asked a federal judge in San Jose to trim the multidistrict litigation accusing the company of surreptitiously slowing the speeds of certain iPhones because of problematic batteries.
Apple’s lawyer, Christopher Chorba of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, told U.S. District Edward Davila at a hearing on the company’s motion to dismiss that customers had authorized Apple to install software on the affected iPhones and that the decreased performance speed was a trade-off to squelch sudden, unexpected shutdowns. Chorba argued that authorization from the plaintiffs negated their claims brought under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, its California parallel, and for trespass to chattels.
