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A class-action lawsuit involving Microsoft's Xbox 360 console has been appealed to the Supreme Court:
The Supreme Court will decide whether Microsoft must face a class-action lawsuit that claims a defect in the media giant's popular Xbox 360 console was prone to scratching game discs, rendering them unplayable.
The lawsuit alleges that vibrations or small movements of the console might cause the optical drive to scratch discs. The suit accuses Microsoft of knowing about the alleged issue before the Xbox 360 launched in 2005. According to the original lawsuit, brought in 2012, there were as many as 55,000 complaints about the scratching issue by as early as 2008.
Compared to individual suits, class action suits are much more costly to fend off and they expose companies to far greater damage awards. The Supreme Court justices did not say when they would hear Microsoft's appeal of a federal appellate court's decision (PDF) allowing the class action to go forward. But in a one-sentence note attached to an order Friday, the Supreme Court said it would focus on whether the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals—the federal appeals court that ordered the class-action to proceed—had the legal authority to review a lower court's decision nullifying the class.
Alternate coverage at Motherboard and Courthouse News Service.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18 2016, @09:07PM
Why is it so touchy? I can rotate, hell, probably toss my Wii up in the air and won't have an issue like that. My laptop too. I move my laptop around all the time while using it, including playing music CDs. Are you SURE the fault all lays with you? Is (or was) the XBox precipitously hanging on the edge of stability like an old LP player?
The part where it would involve you (if you wanted) was not whether you think it was your fault or not, but whether it was a known defect that they didn't let you know, and they covered up. In that case it would be their behavior that gets them in trouble. It is like the much misunderstood (favorite example of tort abuse critics) McDonald's hot coffee case. It wasn't that their coffee was too hot. A woman didn't win $11M simply because she spilled hot coffee on herself. It was because they knew their coffee could cause those severe burns and instead of doing anything to mitigate that (clear warnings, better cup design, lowering the coffee temperature, etc.), they made a business decision that it was financially worth taking the risk and not doing anything about it. This Microsoft thing sounds like it has some similarities to that.
In a practical sense, it will probably make no difference if you join in the case and you win. At best you'll end up with a new optical drive (unlikely), but more likely you'll get a refund for $2.99 or $10 credit in the Microsoft online store or something worthless. Microsoft would take a financial penalty, and the lawyers will end up with worthwhile compensation (they'll get something like 1/3 of the monetary damages in cash, and everyone else will get 2/3rds of the penalty in the form of coupons or some other useless crap).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2016, @06:09AM
I think our system is trying to use the wrong stick to deal with this.
What we need are a few of those congressmen who said into the microphone that they would "fight for us" if we elected them to state that in the light of abuses of the DMCA, they are seriously considering amendments to fair-use copy for backup being the companies involved are not respecting the use the product to law-abiding purchasers.
Violation of electronic locks would be considered about as serious as some car dealer locking the hood of one's car so as to enforce it being serviced only by partner dealerships, and some shade tree mechanic ground the lock off so he could get in and fix the battery cable.
But, dream on... I do not think there is a single congressman with the guts to stand up to the MAFIAA. Promises are something a Congressman says to get elected, however breach of a campaign promise is not really an offense. It sure looks to me that many people no longer see disobeying the drivel passed by Congressmen at the whim of a Lobbyist as not really an offense either. Just don't get caught. Its not like you did anything wrong, rather you did something somebody else did not want you to do.