Adobe ACCP Refusal to Allow Minors to Disaffirm Class Action

Adobe makes a suite of tools called Adobe Creative Cloud Platform (ACCP), which charges a subscription fee to permit persons age 13 and older to develop and distribute creative content. But children who are 13 years old are not adults, and this class action alleges that Adobe must allow them, their parents, or their guardians to disaffirm any contracts they enter into.

This class action proposes a class and a subclass. The class includes all ACCP users who are or were minors, according to Adobe’s records, between August 10, 2013 and the date on which this class is certified. The subclass includes minors who bought access to ACCP, then tried to disaffirm the agreement with Adobe, according to Adobe’s customer service records, but who were still charged fees under that contract.

According to the complaint, Adobe specifically targets students and other minors for ACCP. It claims that plaintiff and minor TK was given a gift authorization by Adobe for a one-year subscription to ACCP. Registration required the entry of a payment method, for which she used her own debit card, the complaint claims, but the terms of service she agreed to did not say anything about auto-renewal.

A year later, the complaint claims, TK received an e-mail notice that the subscription was being automatically renewed, but she ignored it, after which Adobe begin charging her debit card $52.99 per month. After the second charge, the complaint says, she had her parent Ari Kresch contact Adobe to disaffirm the subscription, but Adobe refunded only the second charge, saying that the first charge was final and nonrefundable. 

According to the complaint, Adobe’s General Terms of Use for ACCP, which all users including TK are required to accept, include the statement, “If you reside in North America, your relationship is with Adobe Systems Incorporated, a United States company, and the Services and Software are governed by the law of California, U.S.A.” The complaint notes that Adobe’s headquarters and principal place of business is in California.

But under California’s family law code, minors may enter into contracts only as long as they may later disaffirm them. Yet Adobe says that subscription sale to TK, a minor, was final and nonrefundable, which the complaint claims is a violation of California law. The complaint also finds Adobe’s refusal to refund contracts with minors to be a breach of good faith and fair dealing as well as a violation of California’s Business and Professions Codes.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Children/Minors, Contracts with Minors/Refusal to Allow Minors to Disaffirm