NVIDIA Gets Away With Bait-and-Switch

racquetballguy writes "As part of a December 2010 settlement agreement, NVIDIA agreed to provide all owners of laptops containing a defective NVIDIA GPU with a laptop of similar kind and value. In February, NVIDIA announced that a $279 single-core Compaq CQ56 would be provided as a replacement to all laptops — from $2500 dual-core tablet PCs to $2000 17" entertainment notebooks. Ted Frank, from the Center for Class Action Fairness, filed an objection to the court, which was overruled by Judge Ware today. Once again, the consumers of a class action lawsuit lose."

Comments

Re:Class action lawsuits are rarely good.

[jedidiah]

Class action suits aren't so much about giving the plaintiffs a payday as they are about punishing the offending party. It's this aspect of class action suits that is intended to discourage further corporate misbehavior. A suitable fine would be preferable of course if you could convince big government to pursue big business.

Of course all of the Ayn Rand types complaining about torts won't hold corporations criminally accountable either.

As far as the OA goes... In truth, even a bad class action judgement is better for an individual than AT&T style "arbitration".

Nearly no one has the means to litigate individually. Non-contingency lawyers actually cost real money. Furthermore, "arbitration" is a joke because the "judges" are paid by the defendants. Anyone that thinks arbitration is better for the individual has to be a complete corporate toadie.