Tech department at work says installing Opera GX caused HDD corruption

EnvyofAngels

EnvyofAngels

Machine: Apple Macbook Air (2020) running Ventura 13.2.1
Opera GX Version: Whatever version was available in Nov. 2022 (hadn't updated it since installing in Nov. 2023)

A couple weeks ago, my work laptop stopped working. It was functioning fine until it ran out of battery. I plugged it in to charge, came back later, and it was unusable. I had the tech department at work try to fix it (I work at a small school, and our tech department is basically 1 person). Our tech guy just got back to me and claims that downloading and using Opera GX caused my laptop hard drive to corrupt and wants me to pay the full price to replace the laptop.

Basically, I want to know if there is any validity to his claim that the download/use of Opera GX directly caused the HDD to corrupt. I downloaded Opera GX in November 2022, and the issues with my device began on 2/12/2023. The device worked flawlessly until that date.

I have included transcripts of the messages exchanged between me and the tech department below:

My original issue (2/12/2023):
"Yesterday morning my laptop was working perfectly fine until it died, and when I plugged it in and tried powering it on, it wouldn't work. The laptop will only work when the power cable is plugged in, then it dies immediately after unplugging. If the power cable is plugged in, it will load, but super slowly. Like 15-20 minutes just to load up the log-in screen, and then if you log in, it will take about an hour to completely load the desktop and the applications it usually loads upon start-up. Even once everything is loaded, it is still very laggy, non-responsive, and, for the most part, unusable.

I tried restarting it multiple times, logging in/out of different applications, using a different power cord, using different internet sources/IP addresses, etc. but I cannot get it to work."

My tech department's response (3/8/2023):
"The status of this device continued to degrade and it has now become inaccessible. I have removed the bottom cover and reseated all connections with zero results. Indications are corruption of the processes / drive from the installation of an unapproved web browser on the system (Opera GX) by the user. When slight access was gained, Opera GX was consuming 549% of the CPU / memory. I was able to pull a couple of screenshots and save them off prior to full degradation and losing access to the device."