Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft Wins Xbox Class-Action Fight at US Supreme Court (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the finally-settling-it dept.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of Microsoft in its bid to fend off class action claims by Xbox 360 owners who said the popular videogame console gouges discs because of a design defect. From a report: The court, in a 8-0 ruling, overturned a 2015 decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed console owners to appeal the dismissal of their class action lawsuit by a federal judge in Seattle in 2012. Typically parties cannot appeal a class certification ruling until the entire case has reached a conclusion. But the 9th Circuit allowed the console owners to voluntarily dismiss their lawsuit so they could immediately appeal the denial of a class certification. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing on behalf of the court, said such a move was not permitted because a voluntary dismissal of a lawsuit is not a final decision and thus cannot be appealed. The approach sought by the plaintiffs would undermine litigation rules "designed to guard against piecemeal appeals," Ginsburg wrote.

26 comments

  1. Xbox 360 is my Ex Box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm prejudiced against consoles and I'm becoming more PC.

  2. 9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by HBI · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    You'd think they were out of the mainstream of jurisprudence, judging by how often that happens.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    1. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Anyone else notice how the headline is "MICROSOFT WINS AGAIN!" and even the summary is "we have rules for a reason, and the reasons here are particularly-important so people don't just keep fucking you and then pulling out just after you scream rape each time"?

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    2. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by Aristos+Mazer · · Score: 1

      MOST of the circuits are struck down MOST of the time when the SCOTUS takes a case because they only take cases where at least four of them think there's an issue needing decision. You can see the stats for all the circuits here: http://www.politifact.com/pund... The 9th Circuit is the largest and handles 4000 more cases per year than the next highest circuit, so it isn't surprising that a huge percent of the overall SCOTUS cases would come from that circuit.

    3. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by HBI · · Score: 0

      9th Circuit is the most reversed circuit of the 11 existing circuits. There's no tap dancing around that one.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    4. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by clodney · · Score: 1

      You'd think they were out of the mainstream of jurisprudence, judging by how often that happens.

      It is not nearly so clear cut as that. The huge majority of all cases decided by any appeals court never make it to the Supreme Court, so if you look at the likelihood of any given ruling being reversed by the Supreme court, it is on the order of 0.1%.

      And the 9th Circuit is the biggest circuit, so if you talk in absolute numbers it will have the most ruling reviewed and overturned, just because it hears the most cases.

      Depending on how you do the math and what period you analyze, the 9th Circuit is not even the most overruled circuit - that distinction goes to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which incidentally handles patent filings.

      This site has some good information: http://ellisp.github.io/blog/2...

    5. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by by+(1706743) · · Score: 4, Informative

      Citation? Date range?

      Politifact claims it's the 6th, 11th, then 9th.
      Findlaw also says it's the 6th.
      In 2015 it looks like it was the 11th, and in 2014 it looks like the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th came ahead of the 9th in reversals.

      But Fox news agrees with you, even though the year they select, 2012, it was not the most overturned, with the 1st, 6th, 8th, and 11th having more (the 9th was tied with the 5th).

      I'm not sure how this counts as tap dancing...

    6. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      9th Circuit is the most reversed circuit of the 11 existing circuits. There's no tap dancing around that one.

      Only if you care to cherry pick numbers and time frames from that Politifact article. "The 9th Circuit's reversal rate is higher than average, but it's not the absolute highest among the circuit courts. That distinction goes to the 6th Circuit, which serves Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, with an 87 percent average between 2010-15. The 9th Circuit is in third place." and "We also found that the 9th Circuit never had the highest reversal rate in any individual term between 2004-15. (That's the farthest back we could go.)"

      I found this bit from the National Review preposterous: "The Supreme Court rarely takes cases where a lower court was simply incorrect." So SCOTUS only takes on cases where lower courts are correct? That's a bit of twisted logic. What would be the point of a SCOTUS review if the lower courts are simply correct?

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    7. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Indeed, the numbers seem to show that the DC court had the highest from 1988 to 2008 with the Fed Cir being 2nd. The 9th was 3rd highest; however, the 9th by far had many more cases than any other circuit in front of SCOTUS and in general

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    8. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by Aristos+Mazer · · Score: 1

      Also, in this case, the 4th Circuit -- third for *least* reversed -- concurred with the 9th's decision.

    9. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by Corporate+T00l · · Score: 1

      Well, that quote is accurate, but requires further explanation. When we say "lower court was simply incorrect", the use of the passive voice doesn't indicate what was incorrect. For what is described, what is incorrect is not the binary decision of whether the plaintiff or defendant should prevail, but rather some point of law that was used to make that decision. For example, in the recent Texas death-row case, the Supreme court found that the appeals court didn't use the correct criteria in their judgement and told them to redo it with better criteria.

      The simplistic case would be something like: "you read that word wrong in the law, read it more carefully and try it again".

      So yes, the article is accurate in that when the point a "simple" error, they correct the error and send it back to the lower court to be retried. The cases that SCOTUS tends to actually take and decide on their own is when it can't be sent back. For instance, if multiple appellate courts have come to different decisions on the same issue. There are numerous cases that have frustrated individuals because they thought they had some kind of game-changing case, but it wasn't controversial or common enough to reach SCOTUS. Then the ruling ends up standing only for a region, and then other test cases need to come up in other regions until there is a conflict.

      If all the regions that a given issue is litigated in turn out to agree (which is common case, since most cases are mundane rather than controversial), then the point in question would not even need to reach the supreme court to become the law of the land.

    10. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      The 9th Circus court is the perfect example of progressive politicians legislating from the bench. They interpret the law to say what they think it should say instead of interpreting it as it is written. Just more of "the end justifies the means." The result is all that matters, to hell with the law. You know, when SCOTUS is unanimous including Sotomayer and Ginsburg that you are way the hell out in left field.

    11. Re:9th Circuit gets slapped down...again by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      Here's some facts we can all argue about. It's more fun that way.

      "
      The 9th Circuit’s reversal rate is higher than average, but it’s not the absolute highest among the circuit courts. That distinction goes to the 6th Circuit, which serves Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, with an 87 percent average between 2010-15. The 9th Circuit is in third place.

              6th Circuit - 87 percent;

              11th Circuit - 85 percent;

              9th Circuit - 79 percent;

              3rd Circuit - 78 percent;

              2nd Circuit and Federal Circuit - 68 percent;

              8th Circuit - 67 percent;

              5th Circuit - 66 percent;

              7th Circuit - 48 percent;

              DC Circuit - 45 percent;

              1st Circuit and 4th Circuit - 43 percent;

              10th Circuit - 42 percent.
      "

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  3. Convoluted law system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't understand this summary at all.
    Is this a good thing or a bad thing for Microsoft?

    1. Re:Convoluted law system by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't understand this summary at all.
      Is this a good thing or a bad thing for Microsoft?

      If I parsed it right.
      A) Console owners got themselves a class action lawsuit.
      B) In 2012 a federal judge dismissed the class action lawsuit
      B2) They would then have to wait until the rest of the process (whatever that is, it doesn't say, maybe individual (non class) lawsuits) complete.
      C) But then the 9th circuit said "We'll let you dismiss that suit you brought, so it's ended, so you can appeal the dismissal of the class certification".
      D) The supremes, but not including Diana Ross said "You can't do that. That's cheating". You have to wait while paying large sums to lawyers.

      Lesson: If your product breaks due to a design defect, wear the plaintiffs down with process.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re: Convoluted law system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Lesson: If your product breaks due to a design defect, wear the plaintiffs down with process."

      To be fair they were warned. It said Microsoft right on the box before they bought it. Lesson: don't buy anything Microsoft if you can help it.

    3. Re: Convoluted law system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The sad thing is that Microsoft actually used to be a really good hardware company. Their mice used to be some of the best, most indestructible peripherals you could buy for example.

      Those days went away about the same time as the red ring of death on the XBox.

    4. Re:Convoluted law system by the_skywise · · Score: 1
      No - it's perfectly up and up and here's why

      B> The judge didn't dismiss the lawsuit - the judge agreed with Microsoft that it couldn't be a class action - but let the all the individual suits continue. Therefore the plaintiffs couldn't sue to get their class action status restored until their individual cases were heard. Microsoft's point was that it can't be a class action case because less than 1% of the XBox' sold have people making these complaints therefore it can't be a design defect per se. (Frankly I've gone through 3 XBox 360s and never had the disc gouge problem... just the warped motherboard issue... 2 times...)

      C> The lawyers for the class action suit said that wasn't fair and appealed to the 9th circuit who said "yeah, you can dismiss your cases and sue to get your class action status restored then try again."

      D> The Supreme Court smacked that down saying you can't just dismiss the current case, sue to get class status and then retry again without the first case finishing because the first case may provide a better result to the plaintiffs! (or it may not but you won't know until the trial is complete)

      Lesson: Lawyers make more money with a class action lawsuit and if they game the system to keep more trials in play.

    5. Re:Convoluted law system by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      That's a lot more coherent. Thanks.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    6. Re: Convoluted law system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I still use the vintage white mouse/keyboard combo (keyboard has wonderful USB extension) from Microsoft. My $100 + razor gaming keyboard/mouse combo just collects dust. Gone are the days when Microsoft makes good products though.

  4. If you really want to help.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you really want to help you do not organize a class action. You setup an action-website with information on how people can make their won claim in small claims court.
    Add forums, track the results and improve the templates and instructions.

    100.000 small claim challenges will hurt a company much more than any class action. even if they win them all.

  5. And a Pakistani gets a death sentence for FB post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pakistan's alarming social media death sentence

    In a first verdict of its kind, a Pakistani court sentenced a man to death for committing blasphemy on Facebook.

    ...

    A counterterrorism court handed down Saturday the verdict to Taimoor Raza, a Shiite Pakistani from the eastern city of Okara, for posting "derogatory" remarks about Sunni religious figures and the prophet of Islam's wives.

    ...

    Ahhh, Islam. Soooo tolerant and open minded.

    Meanwhile, let's bash Christianity - somebody said mean things about the artist that created Piss Christ!!!

  6. mod ^0p by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    project faces a set intentions and poor priorities, of a solid dose volume of NetBSD reformaated inventing excusevs WORTHWHILE. SO I = 36400 FreeBSD Juggernaut either worthwhile. It's you got there. Or

  7. Re: And a Pakistani gets a death sentence for FB p by backslashdot · · Score: 1

    The existence of a greater wrong doesn't negate the harm of a lesser wrong.

  8. Nothing happened by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As I understand it: nothing happened. Customers are not happy, their problems were not solved and now they lost chance to pretend for fix/improve their "faulty" appliance. Big company saved hundreds of thousands of its precious money, spending same amount for lawyers and legal actions. No money were harmed in the process and customers paid final price (their device costs some money, right?)

    Why do You fellow readers pretend it must be otherwise? Why should one (giant company) must pay a lot of money for the problems of many people. Everyone of these has lost relatively small amount of money?!? The problem was distributed and pain is less... so, nothing happened.

  9. Re: And a Pakistani gets a death sentence for FB p by tepples · · Score: 1

    True, but a greater wrong's existence does inform the optimal allocation of a given set of resources toward correcting wrongs. See the "scarce resources" exception to the "not as bad as" fallacy.