The wave of litigation targeting Apple over its AirTag tracking devices is a useful case study for any company that manufactures or sells a product that could conceivably be misused by a bad actor. In a case pending in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, a “Jane Doe” plaintiff alleges that a former romantic partner used AirTags to track her on at least three occasions in 2025 by concealing devices inside a suitcase and tablet, which were ultimately used to locate and take their daughter in violation of a custody order. The plaintiff alleges negligence, strict liability, invasion of privacy, and a violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. In
August 2026, U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard struck the complaint as an impermissible “shotgun pleading” and directed the plaintiff to file a corrected version. However, the underlying theories of liability remain at issue and are illustrative of a broader trend among plaintiffs seeking to hold manufacturers responsible for the deliberate criminal conduct of third parties.

The Florida action is one of at least twenty AirTag-related suits filed nationwide. A panel of judges is expected to hear argument as early as September on whether to consolidate the cases into multidistrict litigation, with plaintiffs’ counsel seeking transfer to the District of Arizona. Across these actions, plaintiffs allege that Apple released the AirTag in 2021 despite knowing it could be used “as a weapon” for abuse, maintained inadequate safeguards, and received approximately 40,000 stalking-related complaints between 2021 and 2024. A related putative class action was filed in the Northern District of California in late 2022. Class certification was denied because the plaintiffs lacked standing to seek classwide injunctive relief. That ruling followed a 2023 motion to dismiss in which Apple characterized the plaintiffs’ claims as “misplaced.”

Superseding Cause as the Central Defense

The strongest defense available in these cases is likely that the plaintiffs’ harm was caused not by any defect in the product, but by the independent criminal acts of a third party. In the Florida action, the AirTags were allegedly placed by the plaintiff’s former partner, who used them to take his minor daughter in violation of a custody order. This is deliberate criminal conduct. In most jurisdictions, a third party’s intentional criminal act constitutes a superseding intervening cause that severs the chain of causation between the manufacturer and the plaintiff’s harm.

Plaintiffs typically respond to this defense with a foreseeability argument, contending that if the manufacturer knew the product could be misused, the third party’s conduct was not truly unforeseeable and cannot sever the causal chain. But general awareness that a product category could be misused is not the same as foreseeing the specific manner of a particular plaintiff’s harm, and a product designed for lawful purposes does not become defective merely because certain users misuse it. Apple’s defense in its 2023 motion to dismiss is instructive: the company condemned any misuse of its products “in the strongest possible way,” emphasized that it willingly assists law enforcement in investigations into complaints of unwanted tracking, and characterized its post-launch safety enhancements, including a 2024 statement committing to make AirTags safer and help guard against further unwanted tracking, as the conduct of a responsible manufacturer rather than an admission of prior inadequacy.

Practical Takeaways for Manufacturers

For defendants facing similar exposure, several practical considerations apply regardless of industry. Manufacturers should respond to post-launch safety concerns deliberately and in writing and challenge causation early through motion practice. As courts have generally recognized, manufacturers are not insurers against every conceivable misuse of their products.

Looking Ahead: Implications for Future Litigation

The trajectory of the AirTag litigation is worth continued attention from a defense perspective. With at least twenty cases pending and a decision on MDL consolidation expected soon, the coming months are likely to yield the first substantive rulings on causation and foreseeability in this context. Those rulings stand to influence how comparable claims are litigated against manufacturers of dual-use or easily repurposed products more broadly. If a consolidated proceeding moves forward, defense counsel should anticipate coordinated discovery into internal knowledge of misuse complaints, safety design decisions, and the timing and content of post-launch communications. Courts will likely be called upon to distinguish between a manufacturer’s general awareness that a product category is susceptible to misuse and the specific foreseeability required to impose liability for a particular criminal act committed by a particular third party. How that distinction is drawn in the AirTag cases may well serve as a reference point for future litigation involving smart devices, connected products, and other technologies that serve legitimate purposes but are capable of being weaponized. Manufacturers in adjacent industries, including developers of other tracking, monitoring, or location-based technologies, would be well served to treat this litigation as an early signal to revisit their own safety design records, complaint-handling protocols, and public communications before comparable claims arise.