A 68-year-old pensioner has won his legal fight against tech titan Apple after a staff member wiped out his much-treasured honeymoon photographs, contacts and a once-in-a-lifetime video of a gigantic tortoise biting his hand from his iPhone 5.
The High Court ordered Apple to pay newlywed Deric White £1,200 ($1,812) in damages when the photos of him and his bride Maria, 50, were erased by a technical staff at an Apple Store on Regent Street in London during an attempt to fix his broken iPhone.
White is convinced that the court's decision is a triumph for the typical man who seeks to stand up against big companies such as Apple.
"Big firms like Apple think they are invincible, but it's about time someone brought them to book for the way they treat people," said White to the Royal Court of Justice of London. "Even though the stakes were tiny for them, they refused to settle." He added that he is hoping the court's ruling had washed the "smirk off their faces."
White and his wife were too affected with what happened as they believe the deleted photos — a result of Apple's negligence — from their honeymoon vacation in the Seychelles are irreplaceable.
The incident took place on Dec. 11 last year after White was getting unsolicited texts. When a staff member at the Genius Bar, Igor Andre, handed back the phone to White saying the problem with the phone had been resolved, he learned that all of the data saved inside the phone ended up being wiped as it was reset back to factory settings.
White is a retired model. He appeared as the Hotline man in advertisements of Ericsson mobile phone way back in the 1990s.
Apple, however, stands firm in its claim that the company must not be charged for losing the client's files if he had not backed them up.
Victoria Nottage from Apple said that White made a decision to hand it over to the store's staff member, knowing it had not been backed up and that his videos and pictures had been therefore in jeopardy.
The apple spokesperson went on to say that the employee cautioned White that in repairing his handset, the "data was in jeopardy and he could not guarantee its integrity," adding that Apple's workers usually tell such things to clients prior to performing any action.
