The important issues challenging our society remain at the forefront of the class action bar:
Microsoft has been targeted by a $5m (£2.5m) lawsuit over its Xbox 360 console and the infamous yet almost forgotten scratched disc saga. There have for a long time been many rumours about the Xbox 360 scratching game and movie discs.
Count on lawyers never to forget. What’s this about?
A growing number of Xbox 360 customers are reporting having problems with their disc’s getting scratched by the DVD drive when switching the unit’s position from vertical to horizontal and vise versa.. Initially we thought this was the usual fanboy vs. hater propaganda that swirls around the launch of any new console like this. It didn’t take long until the seriousness of the situation…
… which is explained at some length. Not everyone is sympathetic to the victims in this dog-eat-dog world. But most of the discussion of this burning issues seems to go back, indeed a couple of years.
On the other hand, there’s always the Old World, ever eager to distract from its own coming demographic obsolescence by beating up on that most American of companies, Microsoft. Yes, less than a month ago word got out that the EU lean was on Microsoft to address the problem — which Microsoft seems grudgingly to admit to.
One month: That’s about long enough to read the story, do some research, find a lead plaintiff, and file the lawsuit. So foes of the class action can thank the European Union for this one. Considering the “popularity” of Microsoft on either side of the pond (right up there with plaintifs’ lawyers), not much sympathy is to be expected. But this is an interesting exercise in how the once-forgotten can, in the new global economy, still be resurrected, as long as the statute hasn’t run.