Apple May Face Penalties Over Its Information Sharing Practices In Court

According to a Bloomberg report, Apple may face court-ordered penalties over its information-sharing practices in a privacy lawsuit. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal says that the company’s document production “has more than doubled since the court got involved” in policing information-sharing obligations.

Apple is accused in the lawsuit of improperly collecting data on the locations of customers through iPhones, even after the device’s geo-location feature was turned off. Yesterday, the Judge invited plaintiffs’ lawyers in the case to pursue sanctions against the company, while questioning Apple about e-mails and documents from employees that the company turned up only after the court ordered a review of its document-production process.

Grewal told Apple lawyer Ashlie Beringer that it “doesn’t sound like you did a lick of work” to double-check whether workers properly determined which documents shouldn’t be turned over.

“We’ve gone through close to a dozen people that should’ve come up and didn’t come up” in original requests for information, Grewal said. “In light of that process, how am I to have any confidence that the procedure now is any better” than it was initially, Grewal asked.

Apple’s lawyer said that the company has made “Herculean efforts over the last two weeks” to rectify the problem, and that after another filing late last night, the company’s document production is complete.