National consumer-rights law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP today
announced that California purchasers of e-books will soon begin
receiving account credits or checks totaling as much as $17.9 million as
a partial settlement in price-fixing litigation brought by Hagens Berman
against Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and five e-book publishers.
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.; Hachette Book Group Inc.; HarperCollins
Publishers LLC; Simon & Schuster Inc.; and Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC,
d/b/a Macmillan all joined in the settlement, which provides class
members with more than half of their damages, totaling $166 million for
all consumers. Hagens Berman is still pursuing the remainder of class
members’ damages against Apple.
Apple refused to settle with consumers in California and other states
involved in the litigation, and was subsequently found by U.S. District
Judge Denise Cote to be complicit in a scheme to eliminate retail price
competition in order to raise e-book prices in a price-fixing scheme. A
second trial to determine the amount of damages Apple must pay will be
scheduled to occur this summer.
“We are extraordinarily proud of the settlement, both for the very high
percentage of damages we’ve been able to return to California residents,
and for the speed at which we’ve been able to deliver the result,” said
Steve Berman, managing partner of Hagens Berman and lead attorney for
the e-books litigation. “Typically cases like this are protracted for
years, and our success in returning a large amount of the damages to
consumers this quickly is remarkable.”
Hagens Berman was the first to file litigation against Apple and the
publishing houses for the alleged price-fixing scheme in late 2011.
E-book purchasers who bought e-books between Apr. 1, 2010, and May 21,
2012, will see either an account credit or a check in upcoming weeks,
depending on a number of variables including from which e-retailer the
consumer purchased e-books. For more information, visit www.ebookagsettlements.com.
According to the suit, publishers believed that Amazon’s wildly popular
Kindle e-reader device and the company’s discounted pricing for e-books
would increase the adoption of e-books, and feared Amazon’s discounted
pricing structure would permanently set consumer expectations for lower
prices, even for other e-reader devices.
For more information regarding the settlement, key dates and the
administrator for the settlement, visit www.ebooksagsettlements.com.
About
Hagens Berman
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP is a consumer-rights law firm with
offices in nine cities. The firm represents investors, whistleblowers,
workers and consumers in complex litigation. More about Hagens Berman
and its successes can be found at www.hbsslaw.com.
Copyright Business Wire 2014