Woman Sues Apple For $350 Million Over Wellington Store Discrimination Claim

WELLINGTON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2026 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — A Palm Beach County woman is suing Apple for $350 million. She claims staff at the Apple Store in The Mall at Wellington Green treated her like a thief because she is Black, then took her iPhone apart and handed it back broken.

Curtashia Oliver, who is representing herself, says she went to the store with her husband on Sept. 25 for a confirmed appointment. She had forgotten the passcode to her iPhone 14 Plus and just wanted it erased. According to the complaint, the employee helping her told a coworker, “She’s Black, she probably stole it, I don’t know if I should help her erase it.” Oliver says she heard it. The suit also claims staff joked about her older phone and kept asking whether it was really hers.

Oliver alleges employees took the phone to a back room and kept her at the store for hours past closing. When it came back, the suit says, it had been completely disassembled, its internal retention screws were removed, and it looked like it had been dropped. The phone now won’t get past recovery mode, cutting her off from her photos, saved passwords and the phone number she uses every day. On Nov. 3, store staff allegedly told her the motherboard was damaged and there was nothing they could do. During that same visit, she claims, an employee joked to a coworker that she’d need him as a witness because the store cameras don’t record audio.

The lawsuit, filed Nov. 8 in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, accuses Apple of race discrimination under federal civil rights law, along with breach of bailment, trespass to chattels and negligence. Oliver wants $1,200 to replace the phone and nearly $350 million more in compensatory and punitive damages. She has also filed a discrimination charge with the Florida Commission on Human Relations. The complaint says Apple has not meaningfully responded to a pre-suit notice she sent in October.

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