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Briton sues Apple over lost iPhone 5 photos and data, wins £1,200 ($1,810) compensation

What’s the monetary value of honeymoon photos, 15 years worth of contacts, and other data stored on your iPhone? Following a successful U.K. lawsuit against Apple by Deric White, the answer is “at least £1,200 ($1,810).” According to a report in the Standard, White took his iPhone 5 to the Apple Store on Regent Street to resolve an apparent error message, receiving the phone back — wiped of its prior content by support staff, without having asked White for his consent.

The Mirror reports that a lawyer for Apple laid the blame at White’s feet, noting that by coming to the store for repair service, “he made the decision to hand the phone over to them knowing the iPhone was not backed up and the pictures and videos were therefore at risk… It is something we inform all customers of before they carry out any action on phones or iPads.” Regardless, the judge found that Apple’s “employees were negligent in the treatment of the claimant’s telephone, causing the claimant loss of photographs of particular sentimental value and the loss of all his contacts.”

Valuing his loss at £5,000 ($7,540), White said that his “life was saved on that phone,” including his “favorite video of a giant tortoise biting [his] hand on honeymoon in the Seychelles.” White won a £1,200 judgment against Apple, plus £773 in court costs, after Apple refused settlement offers of £7,000 or a new computer screen and printer worth £1,000.

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Comments

  1. iSRS - 8 years ago

    Oh my god. I thought this stuff only happened in the States. Glad to see we aren’t the only country of morons.

    Then again, it also spells certain doom for the world if they are all dumbing down to match us.

    Who doesn’t back up their phone just in case (forget the fact he was bringing it for service of any kind)? If it has your life on it, you are to blame 100%.

    If I was the judge? I would have ruled in favor of Apple, as well as had their legal fees covered by the plaintiff.

    • applewatch20152015 - 8 years ago

      What a MORON!! He admits that his “life” is on that phone and does NOTHING to secure its contents? Idiot. Complete idiot. I can’t believe the douche won this case. I think Apple has the EASIEST backup system around with iCloud. I would call it dummy proof, but I guess not after reading this article.

      It sucks that Apple had to pay up…on the flip side, I’m going to crack a beer and enjoy the fact that the dude’s tortoise video is gone forever. HAHAHAHAHA!!! Serves him right!

      Apple just lost a nanosecond of profit.

    • vkd108 - 8 years ago

      I do not agree with your opinion that he is a moron. Many, if not most, smartphone users do not back up their data. Many, if not most, computer users do not back up their data. If the company offering a service does not understand that simple fact and does not respect that customer’s property, then they are liable. Simple.

      • applewatch20152015 - 8 years ago

        I’m sure there are many phone users who don’t back up their data. But Apple makes it STUPID simple to do so. Free 5GB iCloud account, nothing else to buy, and they simply tap on a toggle switch to turn it on. So easy a caveman can do it.

        You have an argument for someone who needs to purchase an external hard drive or purchase a backup service, but not when Apple literally provides the backup service and infrastructure for FREE. He’s a moron for not using it. Plain and simple.

      • Thats true but when you set up your phone it shows you about iCloud. The guy chose to not have his phone to back up to iCloud so in reality its his own fault. People are blind to the things that are right in front of them and they do that to himself. Yea he’s not a moron, but he still wasn’t in the right either.

  2. Nolan-News - 8 years ago

    People will do anything for some free cash or goods.

  3. usmansaghir - 8 years ago

    What a w*****!!

  4. Howie Isaacks - 8 years ago

    This moron didn’t back up. It’s his fault, and the judge is obviously a moron too. WTF! Doesn’t anyone take responsibility for their own actions anymore?

    • vkd108 - 8 years ago

      I do not agree with your opinion that he is a moron. Many, if not most, smartphone users do not back up their data. Many, if not most, computer users do not back up their data. If the company offering a service does not understand that simple fact and does not respect that customer’s property, then they are liable. Simple.

  5. babywrinkels - 8 years ago

    Lesson learned the hard way by that Apple tech… My store once took in a computer for repair, ended up having the hard drive fail during diagnostics (which is not unusual, and the symptoms it was brought in for were “Noisy hard drive and slow load times”). Customer HAD to have signed for us to receive the computer at all, but the signed copy was MIA. When we gave her the computer back empty, she threw a fit. We ended up paying $800 or so for data recovery from the drive to avoid legal fees and covered the cost of the repair (~$130).

    People; BACK UP YOUR S***. Seriously. Apple makes it idiot proof, cheap, and simple. Would he have sued a thief who had stolen his phone? A bartender for spilling a pint on it?

    Dollars to donuts, he has a backup somewhere (15 years worth of contacts on a phone he’s had for a max of 2… where did those contacts come from?) and just wanted an excuse to sue one of the worlds most valuable brands.

  6. avieshek - 8 years ago

    I don’t understand one thing, how old is the iPhone 5 if the contacts were 15 years old?

  7. Shaun Legacy - 8 years ago

    So you have 15 years of videos, pictures and contacts on your iPhone 5.? Hmmm. Did you delete them from their original sources after put them on your iPhone? You never shared those pictures with your wife? You had to have gotten the stuff on your phone somehow… UGH

  8. Alan Jones - 8 years ago

    you know, how long does it take to back up your phone? 10 minutes max usually. that being said, how hard is it for apple to put into policy that when someone brings their phone in, that they can not have a device they plug in, a STAND ALONE device, that completely backs up your phone before they do what ever it is they will do to it. I have a local repair shop that does this, they back everything up to a flash drive/card and then fix your phone, and then put everything back, then wipe the flash card. there are allot of people that they do not have a computer. and with the security breaches of cloud storage these days it is understandable not to use them. the apple employees did not do there jobs by making sure the customer KNEW that their phone was going to be wiped out.

  9. vkd108 - 8 years ago

    Many, if not most, smartphone users do not back up their data. Many, if not most, computer users do not back up their data. If the company offering a service does not understand that simple fact and does not respect that customer’s property, then they are liable. Simple.

    • Pedro Coimbra - 8 years ago

      Stop copy-pasting the same opinion! It’s the 3rd time, you sound like a parrot. And if “most smartphone users don’t backup their data”, specially after 15 years, they have it coming, period. Being stupid has a price, I hope they enjoy paying it.

  10. greenbelt2csp - 8 years ago

    One toilet drop away from disaster and it never occurred to this guy to ask a geek or genius what to do?

  11. Bruce Cannon - 8 years ago

    I wanna see the tortoise video! as for the data, can he not ask the NSA for their copy?

  12. Pedro Coimbra - 8 years ago

    I can see his reasoning already:
    «Oh I have 15 years of stuff, most of it irreplaceable, stored only in this small rectangle, and I went to the trouble of actually disabling automatic icloud backup just because. Hmm, my phone, where I have my “entire life” is getting errors, I hope nothing happens when I deliver it for repair, specially since I stoically wont make even a last emergency backup. Oops *#@%£!! DAMN APPLE! I lost everything! Now compensate me for my own stupidity!»

    Well, he kind of *deserved* to loose everything. How spectacularly stupid does one has to be??