A federal judge in Brooklyn threw out most of a class action lawsuit claiming AirPods Max trap moisture inside the ear cups and damage themselves, ruling the $549 headphones still work well enough to meet the legal bar, even if they aren't perfect.
The lawsuit claimed Apple's aluminum ear cups trap body heat, causing moisture buildup that damages the drivers, kills noise cancellation, and breaks the sensors that detect when the headphones are on your head. Judge Orelia E. Merchant threw out every claim brought under New York law for good, meaning they can't be filed again, ruling that New York law only requires a product to meet a basic level of quality, not that it works flawlessly. She pointed out that plaintiff Arthur Apicella had used his AirPods Max to watch a movie, which was enough to show they still do their basic job.
Apicella was dropped from the case entirely, losing every claim he brought. Washington state plaintiff Dustin Amundson gets to keep going on two claims: one under Washington's basic quality law, and one under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, a federal law that sets rules for how companies have to honor their warranties. His other two claims got tossed along with Apicella's, and he has until August 5 to try to bring back his claims about Washington's consumer protection and fraud rules, with Apple's response due September 4.
The lawsuit started in April 2025, when Apicella accused Apple of selling headphones with a known flaw and staying quiet about it, pointing to years of complaints about foggy drivers and water damaged ear cushions on Apple's own forums and Reddit. Apple has never addressed the problem or changed the design. A teardown of the AirPods Max 2 this year found the internal layout is nearly identical to the original from 2020, with Apple only adding a new chip.
In May, Apple agreed to pay $250 million to settle a lawsuit over marketing a smarter Siri that never actually shipped with the iPhone 16. That case was about false advertising, not whether the product worked at all,
What's left of this case is small. Amundson's surviving claims are about whether Apple's warranty terms hold up under Washington and federal law, not about whether the headphones are actually broken, which is a much smaller fight than Apple was originally facing.