Baptiste v. Apple Inc.

Background

Lucila Baptiste and the other plaintiffs filed a proposed class action against Apple Inc. They alleged that Apple retained personally identifiable information collected in connection with video-streaming rentals on iTunes. The information allegedly included names, addresses, credit-card information, rental history, video titles, purchase dates, and prices that remained visible in account histories years after the rentals.

The plaintiffs asserted claims under the New York Video Consumer Privacy Act, New York General Business Law §§ 670–75, and Minnesota Statutes §§ 325I.01–05. Apple moved to dismiss the amended complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally valid claim.

Court’s Analysis

Apple argued that the state statutes create a private right of action for wrongful disclosure of personally identifiable information, but not for retaining information. The court agreed and did not reach Apple’s remaining arguments.

The court compared the statutes’ wrongful-disclosure provisions with their record-destruction, or non-retention, provisions. The wrongful-disclosure provisions expressly connect violations to civil liability and available remedies. By contrast, the non-retention provisions require covered entities to destroy personally identifiable information within a specified period but do not mention liability or refer to the statutes’ civil-remedy sections.

The court reasoned that treating the non-retention provisions as independently authorizing private lawsuits would make the express liability language in the wrongful-disclosure provisions unnecessary. It also relied on decisions interpreting the similar federal Video Privacy Protection Act, which had declined to recognize a private right of action for wrongful retention. The court found that the New York and Minnesota statutes’ language and structure supported the same conclusion and that their legislative materials did not show an intent to create a private retention claim.

The plaintiffs argued that the state statutes’ structure differed from the federal law and that the state civil-liability provisions used broad references to violations of the relevant section or article. The court rejected those arguments, concluding that the lack of an express reference to liability in the non-retention provisions was more important than the placement or wording of the general civil-liability provisions.

Disposition

The court granted Apple’s motion to dismiss. It found that leave to amend would be futile because the dismissal rested on a legal issue that could not be fixed by alleging additional facts. The court dismissed the case without leave to amend, directed the clerk to enter judgment in favor of Apple, and ordered the case closed. The court also denied as moot Apple’s request for judicial notice of its terms and conditions and privacy policy because those documents did not affect the analysis.