Norfolk County Council has secured a settlement in its legal battle against Apple, with the tech giant agreeing to pay $490 million. The class action lawsuit alleged that Apple CEO Tim Cook misled shareholders by concealing falling demand for iPhones in China between November 2018 and January 2019. Apple denied wrongdoing.
Updated October 2026. The settlement received final court approval in September 2024. We have added the outcome and corrected the timeline of Apple’s revenue warning.
The preliminary settlement was filed in the US District Court in Oakland, California, in March 2024. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted preliminary approval on June 6, 2024, and gave final approval in September 2024, according to Bloomberg Law. Attorneys were awarded 22% of the settlement fund, or $108 million. Apple settled while denying liability, saying it chose to pay after more than four years of litigation that had become “overly burdensome, expensive, and distracting.”
The suit was filed on behalf of investors who bought Apple shares during the period covered by the case and were looking to recover their losses. It was led by Norfolk County Council, as administering authority of the Norfolk Pension Fund, which claimed that Cook’s statements had harmed the fund.
At the start of November 2018, Cook told investors that Apple was not seeing sales pressure in China, even amid trade tensions between the United States and China.
Two months later, on January 2, 2019, Apple warned that its quarterly revenue would come in about $9 billion below its forecast, blaming nearly all of the shortfall on weak demand in China. Apple’s shares fell about 10% on the next trading day, wiping out more than $70 billion in shareholder value.
As per a BBC report, the Norfolk County Council expressed happiness and pride following this settlement. They stated,
We are mindful that we are stewards of pensions relied upon by thousands of families and individuals.
When and where it’s warranted, we will take decisive action to recover losses when our participants’ investments are harmed by fraud,
With final approval granted, the settlement resolved the dispute and removed the need for the trial that had been scheduled for later in 2024. Even such a large sum makes little difference to Apple’s finances, given that the company reported net income of about $97 billion in fiscal 2023.
