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Judge Trips Up Settlement In Hot Coffee Class-Action
GamePolitics is reporting that a judge has put another substantial hurdle in the Hot Coffee class-action case. Claiming that individuals involved in the suit could be affected differently by laws in their respective states, Judge Shirley Wohl Kram declared that this case could not be resolved by a single proceeding. "'Accordingly, the court decertifies the settlement class on the grounds that common issues do not predominate over individualized issues,' the judge wrote. The judge's latest decision undermines a settlement agreement reached between lawyers for purchasers of the game who contended they were offended by the hidden scenes, on the one hand, and lawyers for the game's makers, Take-Two Interactive Software and Rockstar Games."
I thought that McDonald's case was resolved years ago.
Work Safe Porn
The judge who allowed certification of this as a class action lawsuit in the first place is an idiot! You've suppose to realize these things before allowing a class action lawsuit to proceed as such.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
... against those hot coffee makers. It can cause nasty scalding if you trip up and spill it.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
"You put the balm on? Who told you to put the balm on?" - Jackie Chiles
I Heart Sorting Networks
No amount of money can repair my psychological damage at having seen two poorly drawn, scantily clad video game characters going on it, but I'll take 2 million.
Could the plaintiffs please explain how they could possible wilfully hack and modify their software to show the hidden content widely described in the same forums where the hack was made available, and then become upset that the visual results of the hack were exactly as advertised by the purveyors of the software modification?
After all, judging from the very low number of people who actually filed a complaint, 2,676 at the last count, it wasn't really an issue anyway. The Hot Coffee mod was difficult to install and, while it was stupid to leave it in the game, the company has been punished enough.
You bought a game. No one forced you to buy it. You hear about a patch that opens up some secret stuff. It would have been pretty hard to not have heard something about the type of content when hunting down the patch. You go ahead and apply the patch so you can see the content. No one forced you to apply the patch. In fact, you had to go out of your way to do so. You are offended. So fucking what! If I pay money and walk into a clearly marked XXX movie theater, should I be able to sue them because I was offended by raunchy sex scenes?
These are people just looking for a free ride.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Let me see if I understand the mindset...
I'm offended! I buy a violent video game with sexual themes and references, then I find out there's a crack, which enables sexual content. I then hunt down, download and install the crack which activates scenes I'd never have seen had I not done so. When I'm done enjoying the crack - laughing at it, beating off at it, whatever these people do watching video game porn - I decide there's money to be made by being shocked, so I sue. After all the content was in the game and it wasn't rated correctly. I only had to take several deliberate steps to release it.
Fucking idiots. Since you can't find a law that applies in all cases, I say apply the old biblical reference. If your eye offends you, pluck it out! While you're at it do the same to their legal counsel. No I'm not serious, but surely there are less stupid things to waste court time on.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Find the judge's car and stand in front of it. When he stops his car- and he will, walk over to the door, pull it open, then throw the judge on the ground. Then, drive around until you find a hooker. Sex with her will put you in perfect health... and if the cops get on your tail, just drive around for a while and they'll forget about you.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
idiot n. - Person who is fine with the ESRB rating of a game that allows fucking hookers in a swaying van, then killing them, then taking the money you just paid them, but files a complaint about hot coffee because of the rating. "Any settlement for the 2,676 complainants doubles as a searing, cherry-red brand of idiocy for life and thus serves us all."
This post is not informative. It is idiotic. A judge is not a lone ranger out in search of dispositive arguments. A judge JUDGES! The judge listens to the arguments of the lawyers and makes a decision. I'll bet the defendant's lawyers sprung the argument on the judge at the last minute. Only an idiot would attack a judge for this without carefully examining the record first.
I buy a house. Later I find out there's "Fuck You" written by the builder somewhere in the house. But it's written in tiny letters on the inside of a sewer pipe underneath the house which is encased in a concrete wall.
Nevermind that I specifically requested my house to model Al Capone's.
If they can waste so much time on a case nobody cares about (except Jack Thompson or other, similar loonies), there can certainly be no real, pressing problems that should be solved instead.
Snideness aside, what is that suit about? Where is the wronged party interested in it? The thinkofthechildren crowd? Why did they buy the game in the first place, it's violent, ya know? Oh they didn't buy it? Then STFU, dammit!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Didn't the players need to go out of their way to find the offensive material? No wonder the case was thrown out on the grounds of there not being a "class" for this class-action suit. Otherwise, we could all use torrents to download porn and then sue the entire internet for offending us.
Judge Shirley Wohl Kram
i dunno about you guys, but that name makes my internal family incest radar shoot off the charts. come on. laugh.
... you can find a G-rated MPEG2 of a movie distributed by NetFlix (ignore DRM for now) or some other source, and demonstrate a patch, which when applied to the movie file, inserts an X-Rated scene, you can sue the makers of the original movie, for making that possible?
SWEET!
In Liberty, Rene
It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous.
These are people just looking for a free ride.
But think of it from the poor lawyers' point of view:
Do you know how expensive it is to ride an ambulance, let alone chase one?
There are student loans to be paid off. Books. The Beemer and SUV. Gucci suits and shoes. Haircuts.
Enough about lawyers. We need to think of the children. No, don't think of THAT child.
Hey! Look at that! The neighbor's place is an eyesore. He needs a haircut and has grease on his hands.
They are offended on how difficult and how much energy they had to exert to install the hack to see the said content. Who doesnt want to watch cartoon porn after gangland violence has been successfully waged?
The raw absurdity of this case has already been stated many times over, but to restate: people who played a violent, aggressive game took the time and effort to seek out a bad "sex" scene, and are seeking cash to solve their irreparably damages.
But what really gets me is the fact that the 3,000 people, and the theoretical defendants, have to pay legal fees. TFA says that the fees over this case have already gone into the millions! That is money wasted. Literally thrown down the drain. Not wasted like "I want to light cigars with 100 dollar bills," (which is a waste but looks PIMP) but literally millions of dollars have disappeared into an already overly rich system.
They should have just walked in and said "Alright, look - this case is dumb. How about this: We donate half of our theoretical legal fees to Child's Play, which will help young children who actually need it, and you GTA-players can enjoy our product and, by not taking our money, ensure you continue getting the titles you love so much."
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
the hooker killing and the running down pedestrians and the drug dealing didn't bother anyone, but the one sex scene did?
If I were the judge, I would throw this thing out with yesterday's jam.
If you're choosing to consume offensive media, you can't choose part of it to sue against. It's all supposedly offensive. Don't consume it. Return it.
The point is, it was rated M for mature. No one should be suing for this. This is a moot point. I do believe they disclosed sexual content in the ESRB rating.
They're using their grammar skills there.
While this is completely ludicrous, I think I have an analogy that might make sense in terms of why the case was allowed to proceed.
Let's say you buy a house from a builder, but he leaves behind a bomb inside a bombproof shelter in the basement hidden under the foundation. If the bomb goes off, it won't hurt anyone or damage property. You can only find the bomb if you dig to it and drill through the thick retainer walls. There are warning signs on the outside of the shelter telling not to open it because there is a bomb inside. If you open it and it blows up, who was responsible?
...depictions of creating human life are horrible and perverted, but depictions of destroying human life are A-OK!
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which socio-religious traditions have brought us to this point.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Yeah, that's a great excuse. "I didn't know what I was doing, those damn lawyers sprung it on me. I was so confused, they just baffled me with one of those legal argument thingies."
Perhaps if it was sprung on him last minute he could extend the hearing and take a minute to think it over, instead of wrapping up quickly to get home in time for his soaps.
Maybe it wasn't a bad decision, but if it was the blame lies squarely on the judge.
Except for the fact the motion to disqualify the class (what happened yesterday) was made last year, you might have a point.
Seriously, I have a BS in computer science and I couldn't get that patch to work (I only tried for a minute or two before just watching the video) and it seems to be to be considerably easier just to get porn on the internet. I am absolutely perplexed how difficult to get to work, crappy drawings, in a game, at a part of the game that nobody should care about (who the hell ever dated her after the fire anyway?) and a pain in the ass to do to boot should be so traumatizing to require a lawsuit.
I fully understand the want to sue for money. However, it's like walking five miles to see this one rock that somebody drew a penis on in chalk... and then suing because it was traumatic.
No sir, I don't get it.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
This post is not Insightful. It is flamebait.
See? I can make moderation suggestions without evidence too!
Aside which, I think a judge hearing this case in the first place is making a mistake. People shouldn't have the right to complain about this sort of thing, much less get monetary compensation for damages to their poor civilian psyches.
But hey, while(true) { nanny_government++; }
+5, Truth
everyone knows boobies are dangerous to children . . .
Ohh spiteful one tell me who to smote and he shall be smolten!