

Microsoft ending consumers' ability to file class-action suits - MRonney
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20120608,0,2211927.column

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guard-of-terra
How come you can put random ridiculous claims in contracts in yor USA without
this having no legal power?

It seems to us from the outside that the legal system of USA no longer makes
any sense. What is bad that USA forces other countries to copy its broken
legal system.

~~~
protomyth
You can put a lot of things in a contract, but it doesn't make them legally
binding if the clause is illegal.

~~~
temp191
they should make it illegal to add things to contract that are illegal.. maybe
heavy fines.

~~~
protomyth
You can get into some serious trouble. Stuff like voiding the whole contract
and providing an easy way to sue. The problem is that nobody knows everything
that is illegal, even lawyers and judges get tasked with determining legality
and maliciousness. Heck, try to get the complete list of federal regulations.

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gouranga
One word: bollocks.

It'll get overruled by a judge the moment they are taken to court.

~~~
Caerus
Unfortunately no.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that this is legal.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_v._Concepcion>

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novalis
The idea that a company can "prohibit" anyone from using a part of the law is
the real red flag here.

~~~
tikhonj
Of course they aren't _actually_ prohibiting anything. Rather, they're just
saying that they won't sell you anything unless you promise not to start a
class-action lawsuit.

They're basically acting like the little kid who owns the ball everybody's
playing with: it's his rules or the highway. But that is still different from
actively stopping people from doing things.

Even so, it's pretty horrible and I would love this to be unenforceable.
Meanwhile I'll just use Linux, thank you very much.

~~~
_delirium
That's true, they aren't prohibiting anybody who has no commercial interaction
with them. But in many legal systems, commercial interactions are held to
always, and irrevocably, operate _within_ the background legal framework. So
you can agree on a contract, but you can't agree, in the contract, that the
law of contracts doesn't apply to the contract, because the law of contracts
always applies to contracts. Which then includes all the usual legal rights,
such as the right to sue for breach of contract, to bring a class-action suit,
etc.

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lini
Not really surprising. Sony did the same after the PSN hacks last year -
[http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/09/15/1542247/new-sony-
ps...](http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/09/15/1542247/new-sony-psn-tos-
class-action-waiver-included)

~~~
mtgx
Not really surprising? Are you expecting everyone to introduce this in their
contracts with their customers then? Do you think it's something they _should_
do, that makes it so unsurprising?

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temp191
Can they also make it legal to own a monopoly?

~~~
mtgx
"If you agree with this EULA, you'll forever be our customer, and you'll never
be allowed to switch to one of our competitors". Might as well give that a try
if they are getting away with this.

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cletus
I have mixed feelings about this.

Firstly, all these pesky class action lawsuits where each participant can get
$7 [1] do absolutely nothing but enrich lawyers. I really don't see the point
in them. So frankly I don't care if those go away.

But I guess it's some form of accountability.

Also, depending on the jurisdiction these provisions prohibiting or
restricting you from suing may be unenforceable anyway.

[1]: A law firm will file a lawsuit on behalf of a number of participants (eg
my monitor really isn't 19", it's 17.7" display size). The law firm will seek
certification by a court as a class. At that point they'll sign up as many
people as they can. These lawsuits nearly end up in settlement so the
defendants may settle for, say, $10 million. The law firm keeps $3 million
(give or take) as they're paid on a contingency basis. The million people they
got to sign up will get $7 each.

~~~
ceol
Aren't class action suits more of a punitive thing instead of actually getting
people money?

~~~
_delirium
That's one of the main use-cases, yes. The worry is that, due to the overhead
of filing a suit and little that would be gained from a 1-person suit even in
the event of success, a company could _deliberately_ cause many people modest
damages, if there were no class-action mechanism. The class-action mechanism
is what makes it risky for a company to cause 1m people $10 in damage each,
because they could face a $10m-damages lawsuit, plus punitive damages if it
was reckless/deliberate activity. Otherwise it would be relatively safe to
cause modest damages here and there, because even if you lose a $10 lawsuit
with tripled damages, that's still only... $30. So companies could routinely
deliberately harm people (if they kept the harms relatively modest) as a
business strategy.

There are alternatives; in some countries, the public prosecutors take a
bigger role and will prosecute those kinds of things on behalf of the public,
instead of providing a mechanism for the public to band together into classes.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Wouldn't the company spend far more that $10m trying to address a million
lawsuits (in small-claims court) for <$10 each though. I imagine any one
small-claims proceeding would cost them several hundred dollars at least.

So are they banking on just defaulting to the judges decision and paying the
money for such cases and then hoping that not many people will bother to
pursue?

Personally I'd love to be in Redmond when, on the back of this decision, they
get half-a-million or more court summons in the post one day.

~~~
tedunangst
There aren't going to be a million lawsuits. I'm probably part of a half dozen
class action suits per year. I never would have considered suing in any of
them. In fact, I would generally prefer if there were some way for me to opt
out and let the company keep my 0.0001% of the settlement. As far as I know, I
can opt out (even if it's more trouble than it's worth), but that doesn't
reduce the settlement amount.

My iPod nano worked just fine, my Netflix DVDs showed up in a reasonable time
frame, I don't have receipts for the RAM I bought back in 1998, the list goes
on and on. Consumers did not come out ahead as a result of those class
actions.

~~~
mc32
Heather Peters is trying to get people to opt out of a class action settlement
by Honda and instead sue Honda in small claims court (where the individual
would have a better chance at wining their case against the Honda rep.

Maybe a million is unachievable, but the idea is there.

<http://www.dontsettlewithhonda.org/>

~~~
ceol
It says Honda won the appeal.

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sukuriant
Why can such powerful stances be resolved with a 5-4 ending position?
Literally one person makes the difference. You'd think for such a far-reaching
situation, a resolution would require at least a 2-person majority to pass.

~~~
waiwai933
Mostly because it's not practical, since these are Supreme Court cases, so
it's not a resolution as such. If you end up voting 5-4 and a 2-person
majority is required, there's a problem. No one can appeal, because it's the
Supreme Court, and you can't just ignore it, because you have to do something
about the case in front of you.

~~~
celer
The supreme court is a court of appeals. If there is not a two person
majority, Stare Decisis.

~~~
waiwai933
I'm afraid I don't quite follow. Yes, the supreme court is an appeals court,
but what I'm saying is that you can't appeal from a SCOTUS decision, so it's
not like a case with a 5-4 decision can be resolved through some other method.

As for stare decisis, the Supreme Court often deals with cases for which there
is no precedent. Isn't that precisely the type of case we're dealing with
here?

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celer
I am saying that if the case comes down to a 5-4 decision, the court issues no
ruling, and in all respects participants act as if a writ of certiorari had
not been granted, except that you extend any relevant deadlines by the amount
of time the supreme court spent dealing with the case.

There are no cases in which there is no precedent. It may be a new technology,
or a new law, or a new amendment, but there is never an utter lack of
precedent. In this case, I used stare decisis to mean that the court should
choose to let the decision stand and not overrule the lower court.

