Way back in 2007 lawyers gathered together a group of gamers angry with Microsoft over scratched Xbox 360 discs to form a class action lawsuit. Nine years later the Supreme Court is preparing to hear Microsoft’s plea to have the case dismissed for a second time.
Along with the infamous red ring of death, early version of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console also had an issue with scratching up game discs to the point that they were unreadable. Microsoft was aware of an issue that would cause discs to be scratched if the console was moved while the disc were spinning, with plenty of warnings not to do just that included on the system and online. Still many users claimed their discs were scratched up for no reason.
In a post from 2007 we detailed the origin of the class action lawsuit brought against Microsoft, but that was so many publishing platforms ago that the article is lost. In a post I wrote some seven years back, Microsoft stated that less than one percent of Xbox 360 owners had scratching issues.
According to an AP report released on Friday (via Polygon), a federal judge dismissed the class action suit in 2012, stating there were not enough complaints to justify a class action suit. Shortly after the dismissal was reversed by a federal appeals court.
And so this past Friday the Supreme Court of the United States of America agreed that they would hear Microsoft’s last attempt to shake the class action lawsuit. The company wants to argue that since individual claims from defendants in the class action had been thrown out previously, the group claim should as well.
The Supreme Court will rule over whether or not Microsoft has to face the class action suit. Should their decision come back in the plaintiffs’ favor, we’ll check back in another five years or so to see how it’s going.
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