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."

Comments

Money for nothing

[philspear]

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.

What I want to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:What I want to see...

[91degrees]

Well, it's quite simple, your honour. We have no real plausible explanation, but proving this will cost thousands of dollars and there's always the risk that the plaintifs may come up with something we haven't considered. There is absolutely no chance of getting the money back and it's cheaper to just settle.

Justice is something the legal system has considered but decided to eliminate as too much hassle.

Just Plain Dumb

[rossz]

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.

I'm so offended

[syousef]

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.