68-Year-Old Represents Self, Beats Apple in Court

He sought $7K to go on his honeymoon again after workers wiped his phone
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 3, 2015 7:20 AM CST
Updated Dec 6, 2015 7:02 AM CST
Latest to Trounce Apple in Court: Retiree Who Lost Pics
A customer, left, receives his new purchase, the Apple iPhone 3G, at the Apple Store on Regent Street in London, July 11, 2008.   (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

A 68-year-old London retiree has just taken on tech giant Apple, representing himself in court, and won. The uncommon victory for Deric White is the culmination of a one-year battle in court after White dropped off his phone for servicing at the Apple Store on Regent Street in London, only to return 20 minutes later to find that employees had wiped his entire phone clean without asking permission first, reports the Evening Standard. When his wife learned that their 2014 honeymoon photos from the Seychelles were gone, she cried, and White, who'd just beaten cancer, decided to wage another battle. "Having fought cancer," he says, "I was not going to get defeated by Apple."

"I did this for the common man," White says. "It's not so much the money that I have won, but it's the moral victory. ... It's a monumental victory." White asked for just over $7,000 so that he and his wife could take their trip a second time, but he was reportedly happy with the roughly $3,000 he was awarded instead. He says he and his wife plan to spend it on a trip to Cornwall in the UK. In addition to losing his honeymoon pics and "favorite" video of a tortoise biting his hand, he lost pictures from an African safari, as well as photos of the medical team from his 10-month battle against cancer of the esophagus. White's case is a good reminder to regularly back up devices, notes the Daily Dot, since even tech support is far from infallible, and "you never know when you could drop it in the toilet and lose everything." (Apple lost what could be a far bigger battle earlier this year.)

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