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The Courts Government News

After Toshiba's settlement, Others Follow (Law)suit 135

Posted by Hemos from the i-hate-the-legal-system-sometimes dept.
Can Savas writes "After Toshiba's $2.1 Billion settlement of the lawsuit on the "probably" faulty floppy controller, others have filed lawsuits against Compaq, HP, Packard Bell/NEC and eMachines. I wonder where these lawsuits are heading but I guess some will strike it rich (having suffered nothing at all to boot). These lawsuits show how unsufficient the jury system is for cases like this where the jury is likely to be clueless. If any of these manufacturers end up settling or losing the suit, then there might be some real problems for the entire industry. "
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After Toshiba's settlement, Others Follow (Law)suit More

After Toshiba's settlement, Others Follow (Law)suit

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  • They were talking about this lawsuit on NPR last night. They said that the defect was discovered over 10 years ago by an IBM researcher. If they have knowingly been using defective parts for that long, then they should be held liable. Lots of people (including me sometimes) use their floppy drive to backup their work. If my machine crashes and I lose the file from my hard disk, I would not be very happy to find my backup was useless. -ec
  • >>and it [trial by jury, american court system] 's a damn lot better than most other countries out there.

    Can you substantiate that claim? and I do mean most, not just some that are known to have problems. Yes, it's not the worst system.. but better than most? I'm not so sure... IMO a jury system is too sensitive to emotion, rather than rational interpretation of the law.

    //rdj
  • Your post seeks to attack my reasoning, yet it only reinforces the double standard.

    If you read the article again you'll find that the problems in the Toshiba notebooks were caused by a faulty third-party microcontroller. If Toshiba can be forced to pay $2 billion for a faulty NEC microcontroller, why is Microsoft somehow exempt from problems caused by faulty third party OEM drivers?

    I am not supporting additional litigation. I agree that the lawsuit against Toshiba and NEC is undeserved. However, I am taking the opportunity to point out that if we must live in such a litigious society, Microsoft should be in at least as much hot water as Toshiba.

  • YO! (Score:1)

    by gavinhall ( 33 )
    Posted by cookieman.k:

    YO!
    Justice in the US = crapy of options ?
    Disclamer:
  • I don't think any other country in the world puts up with such a horrible amount of silly lawsuits. So why does America?
  • because of the ridiculously high claims that are awarded.

    //rdj

  • And you wonder why... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    After this lawsuit, now maybe you PC Slashdot whiners will understand why Apple ditched the floppy drive on the iMac!

  • I'm pretty sure it was Ben Franklin who made a big deal about education at the start of this country. His position was that democracy and trial-by-jury only work when the populace is properly educated.

    Obviously, a lot of people aren't learning the things they really need to.

  • These chips were used in many, MANY EIDE controllers between about 1994 and 1997, particularly on 486 and early Pentium boards. (Check using eidete17.zip [uwasa.fi])

    These chips have a multitude of bugs (quote from /usr/src/linux/drivers/block/cmd640.c - "these chips are basically f*cked by design") all of which could cause serious data loss. I even complained to my motherboard manufacturer who asked what video card I had (S3 864) and dismissed my complaint saying that all PC hardware around including that specific chip has serious bugs...

    Then there's the UltraSparc bug that causes problems if you run it in 64-bit mode...

    I can't say I've stopped worrying, but I don't see there's much that can be done to fix the situation... :(

  • Isn't a jury supposed to be made up of "peers". But WHOSE peers? The plaintiff's or the defendent's? In most cases the peers of these two groups are identical. But in a case like this, clearly at least 50% of the jury should be people with technical expertise, computer engineers, etc.

    Right? Is there a lawyer in the house?
  • As I see it, the idea of trial by jury isn't bad, but in practice it cannot work. Often what is needed is knowledge of the implications of a court ruling, something that cannot be expected from everyone.
    This CAN be expected from professionals though...
    that's why I am not in favour of a jury in court.

    Since I have no idea what a trough of truth is, I cannot comment on it.

    //rdj
  • will the companies realize that it's probably better for the industry to fight these law suits and (hopefully) win instead of settling out of court? sure, it's easier to settle, but i think the industry needs to show that nonsense like this won't be tolerated. this is absolutely ridiculous.
  • now that is want i like to see :)
  • I swear, people these days are just way to quick to sue. I hope they get sued by some one else in return, for using faulty drives. suckaz
  • Can the Times sue the NYT over the models eggs story?

    Can I sue my boss for missing a deadline?

    Hohum - I could... but I wont... because I have more exciting things to do in life.

    It isn't all about an easy buck - there are more things to life than that. Believe it or not.

    I *sigh* at the world sometimes.
  • You see all those "not fit for any particular purpose" clauses in pretty much all software? Well, that's the reason they're there. So you can't sue.

    And besides, we all know MS is 1% programmers, 19% marketers and 80% lawyer, do you really think they'd simply settle?

  • Doh! (Score:2)

    by Foogle ( 35117 )
    Well I think it goes without saying that this sets a dangerous precedent. It's obvious that lawsuits have become too much of a "cure-all" in the US recently. The question is: What can we do about it?

    Jury selection isn't likely to change anytime soon, and I don't think it should -- the idea is sound. What I don't understand is how the Toshiba case (and many others) ever became so inflated. $2 Billion. Seriously, I don't have all the facts, but could their floppy-problem have actually caused that much loss?

    Thoughts anyone?

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • What a dumb idea (Score:3)

    by scumdamn ( 82357 ) on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @01:40AM (#1570327)
    Computer manufacturers offer warranties on their products just like any other company that makes a product. When the part is defective, they issue a recall. Some, like Dell with the Western Digital issue are proactive and call their customers to let them know when the technician will be coming out to replace the drive. Others try to bury it under the rug. Neither really deserves sued. That's why we have places like the Better Business Bureau. You report a company for slow response, write letters to the CEO, call and complain because the product ise not working as designed, and I can't believe you wouldn't recieve service. I'd prefer to work with and buy products from a proactive company, but I sure can't see myself involved in a class action lawsuit against a pretty reputable company unless I wanted to damage them. I'd take care of the issue myself and maybe even take them to small claims court where the issue belongs. At least that way I would get full compensation.

    That's all the rambling. If there's anything good in what I just said it's your responsibility to pick it out.
  • With the proliforation of these kinds of lawsuits, akin to the 'suefest' currently taking place in the tobaco lobby, a counter suit (er um cross suit?) is sure to happen.

    One or more of these hardware makers is going to turn there attention toward sueing micros~1 for there poor product quality in the past.

    I for one look forward to the day when micros~1 is held liable for the billions they cost buisness across america in lost productivity.

  • I have here a Toshiba Satellite 315CDS. New, it cost my wife somewhere around $2000. With the settlement, we're entitled to somewhere around $200-400 and around a $200 coupon for toshiba products. That's around 20% of the purchase price, at least.
  • Toshiba chose to circumvent the legal system by settling. Can't pin that one on America.
    Actually, you can. The rules of tort law keep getting changed, by court precedent and legislation; it was legislation in Florida which opened the door to charging the tobacco companies $Billions for incidents which occurred years or decades before the passage of the law (no "ex post facto" safe harbor in liability law, only in criminal law). In Japan, Toshiba would never have been sued for this.

    What this country needs is a healthy dose of tort reform. Anything (well, almost) that gets people out of the business of suing other people and into something productive can only be good for the nation. (That especially includes legal maneuvering over ridiculously obvious patents... but that's another thread.)
    --

  • Man! I predicted lawsuits [slashdot.org] against japanese companies after the original story ran - just didn't realize how quickly lawyers move in when they smell the chum of large settlements.

    BTW - unlikely to see a lawsuit against M$ - these lawyers aren't interested in trials - these guys want the THREAT of a trial (and the bad PR associated with it) to shake down large companies into paying cash booty. This works well against japanese companies that are not tuned in to the lawsuit culture. M$ is famous for aggressively fighting - can't shake them down. Lawsuit-virgin Japanese firms tho are easy game in comparison.

    -- If the blues don't kill you, brother, they'll make you a mighty, might man.
    - John Hamilton, Pursuit Ballistics
  • Maybe there'll be a checkbox on the 1040 forms with "Lawsuits" as primary source of income...
    Damage awards don't count; they're supposed to be compensation for harm you suffered, so they aren't taxable. I don't know about punitive damages; is there a CPA in the house?
    --
  • John Dvorak wrote an article around 1989 lambasting the computer industry for the complete and total lack of quality that 5.25" floppies possessed. They were slow, they were loud, and most disturbingly, they lost data with ridiculous ease. (Somebody find me a link to this article. I need it for my files.)

    Ten years later, we're using 3.5" disks, and we're in the same situation.

    Steve Jobs and the iMac development team had a chance to fix the situation. They recognized that floppies were garbage. They knew they weren't stable by any means. In response...they chose nothing.

    Thanks, Steve.

    So, floppy disks persist as the one and only truly standard way for moving documents and small files from one machine to another, and maybe even storing them off a hard drive for some period of time. Most of us who build our own computers know--buy Teac, or you might as well throw away your data. Most of us who build our own computers do so because ten more dollars for a part that can be trusted is worth it for us, but for a large scale company churning out thousands of boxes, ten more dollars per unit is suicide if you can get away with using it to pad the bottom line.

    This is one of those "diseconomies of scale" when it comes to large computer companies--saving pennies on a box to remove a feature that everybody expects but only 1% know to check for(like supporting more than 32MB RAM on a certain motherboard, Compaq)--that keep the little guys in business.

    Anyway, I must say I'm not entirely displeased with the tremendous pain about to be inflicted on those who have been knowingly distributing fatally flawed 3.5" disk technology in an effort to save money. I spent two years as a volunteer tech at my university--the amount of raw labor I saw go down the drain because of floppies gone terribly wrong was shocking, as was the amount of disks that simply couldn't handle a Linux boot disk. Imagining large corporations going through the same kind of pain I've watched a relatively small population of students go through is frightening, to say the least.

    Of course, there will be some companies defending their negligence by saying the minimal quality standards were "common industry practice". So too were the falsified 15"/17" monitor statistics that lead to the "Viewable Size in Every Advertisement" agreement. Lets not even begin to mention the coming slap down of the entire 56K modem industry, which was all too happy to claim speeds twice as fast when even in the most generous contexts it wasn't the case. And, of course, sooner or later, Inkjet Printer manufacturers will get their due--8 pages a minute? Yeah, if you're printing a period.

    But what's critical is that while faking monitor sizes only strained a few eyeballs, and slow modems and printers maybe caused a missed deadline or two, substandard(hell, plain old standard) floppy drives caused data loss that directly led to wasted employee hours and lost property.

    I can't have too much mercy here. I've done the recoveries, I've gotten the pleading phone calls, I've thanked Word's Autorecovery feature innumerable times(and cursed Windows' awkwardness at saving to hard drive and making only a copy for the floppy).

    It may have taken a very long while for the industry to be taken to task on this, but hopefully we'll finally see a stable portable media standard arise from the legal ashes.

    About time.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • If you are that much knowledgeable please enlighten me, holder of great intellect.

    //rdj
  • There's a problem with Loser Pays laws (except in egregious cases). The problem is this: You sue me (and let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're actually in the right). I go out and pay $1 million for a team of 23 lawyers who bury you in paperwork, find lots of tricky ways to appeal, and otherwise abuse the system until they win. Believe me, no matter what the case, the $1 million worth of lawers will win against someone with hardly any money/time spent. So now you not only lose, but YOU have to pay my lawyers.

    This would lead to an extreme case of attorney arms races, and would NOT benefit the system.

  • I see the confluence of several factors here:
    • The settlement of the Toshiba suit, and the copycat suits against Compaq, HP et al.
    • The patent on "date windowing" and the legal action over it.
    • The growing political awareness and clout of tech companies in Washington.
    The tech sector of the economy may be the only force in America which has more money to throw around than the trial lawyers. With the ATLA putting its sights on Silicon Valley, this is going to come down to war. The ATLA has been playing the legislation game far longer than the tech sector, but money is a great leveller. When this shakes out, we may actually have two things which are near and dear to all our hearts:
    1. Tort liability reform, where the "lottery" aspect is dealt with, and
    2. Patent reform, which puts more emphasis on genuine novelty and cuts the term of protection down to something sensible for the industry (or imposes mandatory licensing).
    Unfortunately, getting there means that the tech sector has to speak with one voice. That's going to be awfully hard for this fractions, contentious, individualistic bunch to do... but it's very important if we're to have a future!
    --
  • To me it would seem obvious that the jury system is based on the premise that most people are capable of acting as jurors. Let's call this assumption A.

    You describe the most people of today in rather unfathery manner, especially their capacity for logical thinking. To make my arguments simpler, let's pretend that I agree with you on this (and I honestly do agree with much of it). However, I would also contend that person fitting that description would be unfit to be a juror. Let's call these assumption B (the description) and conclusion C (unfit jurors).

    You start off by stating that jury system per se isn't fundamentally flawed. (Assuming that "problem is not" approximately equals "isn't flawed"). I am puzzled by this. To me A, B and C together bring about the conclusion (D) that jury system can't work.

    There are few possibilities that might explain this. You could disagree with A, although that would be rather far out. B is your own words. The leap from B to C is probably questionable, but if you allow C then D is pretty obvious. So I think that either you:
    a) disagree with C (Meaning that people don't have to be able to think logically to be able jurors.)
    b) just didn't think it thru.


    --Flam, who also thinks some people shouldn't be able to vote on account of stupidity
  • I wonder where these lawsuits are heading but I guess some will strike it rich (having suffered nothing at all to boot). These lawsuits show how unsufficient the jury system is for cases like this where the jury is likely to be clueless. If any of these manufacturers end up settling or losing the suit, then there might be some real problems for the entire industry.

    Hmm. This guy isn't satisifed with submitting the story, he also has to offer us his wise prognostications on the deficiencies of the tort system as well. You know what? I'm not buying it.

    Big business is always trying to scare us about the evils of seedy trial lawyers and stupid, uninformed jurors. You know what I'm more worried about? Big business cutting corners to make a buck at the expense of the product. They've been doing it for years. Now that it's catching up to them they want to start crying. Too bad. If they had been doing the right thing way back when, they wouldn't be in this position now.
  • One thing Apple learned is that they'd conditioned their customers to expect a good quality floppy drive (with mechanical eject). The Clone machines with standard floppies didn't sell well to mac fans.

    Unlike $10 PC Floppies, the replacement part value of a Mac Floppy drive was $50-$75. I don't know what the wholesale costs are, but I think it's safe to say that Apple was losing at least $20 per computer shipped relative to PC companies.

    And, while I'm blabbering on the subject, has anyone here ever used a floppy drive from an older IBM brand machine? Wonderful devices -- fast, quiet, and stable. IBM even standardized on 2.88MB for a while. Of course, who wanted to pay for a nice floppy drive? People settle every day for the ones that make mysterious and random 'crunk' sounds while Windows 95 is booting. The things are screaming "unreliable" at you.

    But that's the general rule of consumer computing hardware - don't expect any real quality unless it translates directly into higher Quake benchmarks.
    --

  • NEC shipped Versa laptops with defective motherboards from about 1995 to 1998. They've quietly admitted to the problem, but have not issued any general recall or settlement. Some larger customers got discounts on new equipment, but people had to go through warranty service, where they replaced one defective motherboard with another defective motherboard. I've even been told that power management is "unsupported" on these machines - all of which are supposedly Windows logo certified, which at the very least should mean that APM works.

    This is not an isolated example -- there's been millions of fundamentally defective systems dumped on the public over the years. Furthermore, there's very little government protection in this area, mostly because the PC parts market is made up a large number of obscure and offshore companies. Most users rarely expand their memory or run an intensive operating system which might uncover hardware stability or data loss problems, or if they do, they are content to just blame Microsoft Windows. (I see people on Slashdot doing this all of the time. "NT Sucks - I keep getting memory parity errors!")

    Toshiba should be given credit for rectifying a minor problem with what have been generally good machines. I'd like to see this huge settlement bring the sharks out of the water -- it might get these clowns to clean up their act and stop peddling defective merchendise.


    --
  • The worst possible situation for a jury trial would be to have a jury of people who considered themselves experts. The general population isn't stupid. They can figure out what a floppy controller does if somebody bothers to tell them. And most importantly, they can look at the case without biases. Imagine if you had a jury of slashdot readers on the jury in a lawsuit against MS. They'd be standing up screaming Guilty! before the trial even started.

  • Expert juries (and some history) (Score:3)

    by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @04:48AM (#1570357) Journal
    I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need some, see a laywer licensed in your jurisdiction.

    The original idea of a jury was that the king's judges would have their bailiffs round up the men of the town as a jury, since they're the ones that knew what happened (a disqualification today).

    Rather than a jury of twelve random people, there are many cases where we'd be better off with, say, three people who know the subject matter, or a group with one of each kind of special knowledge needed--an engineer, a programmer, etc.

    We already have "special verdicts" rather than "general verdicts" as a possiblity--rather than yes/no and a number, the jury issues findings point by point, which can be assembled by the judge. The experts could also issue such findings.

    And going back to a weregild concept on injuries might be a good idea--an arm is worth X dollars, a leg Y, a death Z, and so forth . . .
  • Well, you can't get rid of juries. It's provided for in the Constitution (Article VII of the Bill of Rights) that civil trials may be decided by a jury.

    The problem is not so much with the concept, as with the execution. If jury members were required to have some knowledge of the issue at hand (all have to be EE's in Toshiba's case), and lawyers weren't allowed to be lawmakers (a conflict of interest like that would land you in jail in just about any other profession), a lot of these problems wouldn't exist.

  • The system you advocate would be unconstitutional, because it would violate the accused's right to a fair and impartial jury. Especially economicly disadvantaged people would suffer, because they above all others are least likely to be able to afford to miss work to serve on a jury.
  • The most disturbing aspect of this settlement is the double standard that it exposes between hardware and software vendors.

    Buggy Microsoft software has certainly caused more loss of productivity in this nation than defective Toshiba floppy drives. Yet Microsoft is allowed to hide behind their EULA (which disclaims all warranties), while Toshiba is docked a billion dollars. Hardware companies have to offer a warranty to stay competitive. Why don't we demand the same from software companies?

    The fact that Microsoft can get away with no warranty on its software is smoking-gun proof that consumers have no choice in the software market. With no warranty, Microsoft has no incentive to fix bugs in its software. It's about time that we realize the damage that buggy Microsoft software has caused, hold them accountable for their defective software, break up their monopoly, and give the consumers choice in the marketplace.

  • Hey guys, we're not talking about a company that shipped defective products. That's not the issue at all.

    Anybody can ship defective products and not be sued at all: Anybody can fail.

    The issue is that they damn well knew the problem, and as a matter of policy, shoved the crap down the throat of unknowing customers, thinking that it wouldn't be discovered it anyway.

    And then it becomes one big, massive scam. Then, they haven't dealt in good faith any longer; on the contrary, they've massively misrepresented facts, subverted the truth, lied and cheated for ten years in a row.

    Ok, Toshiba, how much money did you make by doing that?

    That's the minimum you gonna pay in punitive damages.
  • You're missing the point!

    If Microsoft shipped products in which they knew the bugs already, before shipping them, they would be liable to.

    If the bugs are discovered afterwards, they've still dealt in good faith, and are not liable.

    Microsoft may ship a lot of crap, but to this day, no one has been able to prove that Microsoft knew beforehand of any bugs in the software, and shipped it anyway.
  • The new lawsuits have originated from the same source as the one against Toshiba. Giddy from their $2B settlement (to which Toshiba never should have agreed), and now equipped with a vast war chest, they're out to sue EVERYONE who has made a product that incorporates an NEC floppy disk controller. Including NEC itself, which took action to fix the minor glitch.

    This suit is an example of opportunistic extortion by greedy lawyers at its worst. The bug has not been shown to have caused a single byte of data loss, EVER. (Most OSes verify writes to floppy disks by reading back what they wrote, and so would catch errors even if they did occur.) However, the suit may lead to a new trend: lawyers poring over the errata published by chip makers, looking for fodder for lawsuits. Which, in turn, could cause vendors such as Intel to quit publishing them. This could make computers and operating systems far less reliable, because programmers won't be ABLE to work around bugs. And the development of open source software will be hobbled, because chip makers won't agree to the publication of source code which shows workarounds for errata.

    Let's hope that this next crop of defendants does not knuckle under, as Toshiba unwisely did.

    --Brett Glass

  • I've always wondered if it was better to spend your money on more evil attorneys, when you find yourself a defendant or spend it on hit men for the plaintiff and his evil attorneys.


    "The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
  • But that's the general rule of consumer computing hardware - don't expect any real quality unless it translates directly into higher Quake benchmarks.

    Oh, you'd be surprised how amazingly correct you are. I blame the death of Cyrix on John Carmack and the amazing fact that Quake--the only application to ever demand serious FPU speeds, and the most Pentium-tuned app in history--ran like a dog on anything but Intel. That 3DFX was the only credible 3D company for quite a few years(an amazing amount of time for a peripheral manufacturer in this industry) was also Carmack's doing.

    Yes, Carmack is a programming god. Just look up the Law of Unintended Consequences, however.

    In contrast, Carmack's utter rejection of the Direct3D Execute Buffer disaster(tuned specifically for MS's Talisman architecture) translated directly into a reasonably predictable redesign of Direct3D.

    All parts that are likely to fail in a system should have a standard of reliability they are required to meet in order to reach some government/industry certification. Couple this with an mandate to advertise consumer awareness at the level of "Intel Inside" and you force the market to a minimum but acceptable level of quality.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • Your analysis is for the most part valid, however, your first premise (a: jury system assumes most people can be jurors) is false.


    The American jury system was originally set up to allow only those that can vote to be jurors. However, the original requirment to vote was being a land owner, and that eliminated much of the population. We have since changed the requirements for voting, with the unintended result of lowering the bar for jury duty (I shan't go into what this has done to voting; that is grist for another day's mill)


    I also believe you misinterpret what "A jury of your peers" means. For example, if I were a biker, and whacked some cager for touching my ride, would the fact that I am a biker entitle me to a jury of bikers? Of course not. The "jury of your peers" means that the jury is not to be some high-holy tribunal appointed by The Powers That Be.

  • I've been contemplating a restructuring of the jury system for sometime. The key points are this, -

    You state- "most people today are incapable of - listening to facts, remembering facts, following a chain of logic, or going with the logical choice no matter what their personal feelings are"

    However, 1)our legal system does not allow jurists to take notes or in anyway have recordings of the trial. 2)Most of the information presented is not 'factual', or at least certainly not objective 'truth', the presentations of both sides are highly skewed and biased. 3) The majority of legal arguements are specifically crafted for strong emotional content because of the length of trials and the ease with which 'fact' and 'logic' can be obfuscated. Whereas emotional content leaves a very deep and powerful impression.

    Thus... here are my proposed solutions,

    1) The court proceedings should be fully recorded on video- the witnesses, the judge, and the attorney's - yes I know there is a court recorder typing up every word spoken, however much of what we say is in body language, inflection, and tone. The jury should have full access to these recordings during there deliberation. This will likely minimize the impact of the tactics of confusion and emotional plea.

    2) I would like to see a pool of 'Professional' jurors. Individuals who have sufficient knowledge about a jurys rights and powers, are at least moderately intelligent, and have decent reasoning ability's. While this may not be strictly a trial by one's peers, the current jury system certainly isn't. Jury selection is based on psychometrics of who will give the most likely verdict- usually chosen on there basis to be emotionally swayed and their predispostion to biases based on there ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.

    ... as to your ideas of letting people to reschedule or opt out- I think that is an excellent idea.

    Thanks,
    LetterRip

    (for those who would like to further discuss these ideas, I can be reached at - fstmm@yahoo.com)
  • How about a class-action suit against lawyers who file baseless class-action suits that waste the court's time and our tax dollars?
  • If it's true that Toshiba shipped a large number of laptops with defective parts then why is this so wrong?

    I recall watching a movie years ago based upon a car company that knew it's cars would explode if hit "just right" while in an accident. The car company went to the bean counters who told them that it would cost X million dollars to do a recall and fix the problem while it was probable that it would only cost them X/2 million dollars to settle lawsuits for people injured or killed due to the defect. Guess which option the car manufacturer chose ?

    It's true that getting a defective part in a laptop is not in the same as being killed due to a defective car part, but you get my point (I hope).

    I agree that litigation is way out of hand, but companies need to be held accoutable. When power and money and greed become the driving force behind large corporations, or any business, they had better be prepared to deal with the results.
  • I believe you missed a few points:
    1. Jurors are paid for their work. In fact, the amount paid to a juror provides more incentive to a "disadvantaged" individual that to me: I get much more that minimum wage.
    2. The "jury of your peers" does not mean "people identical to you", it means that jurors were not to be some select group appointed to the task by The Powers That Be (like judges) (what do you do for a living? I am a juror, don't mess with me!) but rather from a larger section of the population.

    Our founding fathers did not want every Tom, Richard and Harold with a pulse to vote, be on jurys, etc. Originally, only land owners could vote. This was to help eliminate much of the population: the thought being that if you own land, you must have at least some modicum of a clue (or you'd have lost the land by now), and that you have some stake in making things better. Compare and contrast to the way things are now.


    Note: were the old rules applied to me, I would not be able to vote or serve on a jury, since, while I am a professional and make good money, I currently do not own any land.

  • Do you realize that most SOFTWARE LICENSES prevent you from suing the software company for anything more than the price of the software if they wrote buggy code???? This isn't just a "M$" practice, it's practically universal in the software industry.


    Yes it is. In fact, it's even part of the GNU GPL and the BSD licenses. (Gasp!)

    So what?

    People have to be responsible for what they do. Period.


    I see you don't write software for a living.

    Okay, here's the deal. There are two ways software can be written. The first technique is what is commonly used for non-fault-tolerant processing, customarly for things where failure to operate does not risk someone's life. For example, perhaps your Word document got munched when you saved it to a floppy; while it's annoying, it's not life threatening.

    It's because systems can fail that you back up your work and make multiple copies of important documents. (You DO back-up, don't you? You DO make multiple copies of your work, don't you?)
    Even if the software was perfect, and the hardware was perfect, and there were absolutely no bugs whatsoever in the system, such systems can fail and lose work anyways due to things like ionizing background radiation blowing holes in the contents of the RAM on your system.

    For mission-critical systems where fault-tolerance is important (such as for medical equipment), techniques do exist to make the software resistant to problems. For example, buggy microcode in a floppy controller wouldn't cause data loss in a fault-tolerant system because the higher level floppy drivers assume the floppy controller is faulty, and verifies that the data has been written correctly.

    Fault tolerant systems operate on the assumption that subsystems are faulty, and so take extra steps to make sure that an operation actually succeeds, or at least rolls back the operation if a subsystem fails.

    The reason why most non-mission-critical systems aren't written in a fault-tolerant manner is because frankly, the cost of creating a fault-tolerant system is very high. Further, using a fault-tolerant system is like using the air-bags in your car: unless you follow the instructions and also wear the seat-belt (or, in the case of fault-tolerant systems, buy the redundant hard disk and the backup tape drive and make daily backups), it's just a useless and expensive option that one day will blow up in your face.

    To use an analogy, car manufacturers have known for years how to create a car so durable, so safe, so secure to the passengers of the car, that a passenger can pretty much walk away from a 120+MPH collision with a brick wall. This technology has been perfected over years of racing cars in dangerous conditions at very high speeds.

    Yet you won't see most of these technologies migrate over to the family car. Why? Because they're expensive and extremely inconvenient. Fat chance Joe Bloe will ever use a 5-point restraint harness, and asking him to wear a helmet and a fire-retardant racing jacket to go to work is probably too much to hope for.

    Sure, people have to be responsible for what they do. But to presume that software should always be bug-free, or else the programmers should be sued into oblivion--that comment is about as ignorant of the issues as they come.
  • If Microsoft didn't know before that their software was buggy, they certainly know now. Why have they not issued updates to address the continuing prevalence of blue screens on Windows machines?

    Refusal to fix a problem in your shipping product after you are notified of it is just as bad as (and in fact equivalent to) shipping a product that you know is defective.

    On the hardware side, if you read the article [cnet.com] you'll find that a ton of companies who used the defective NEC chipset are being sued. The article says that even though NEC fixed their microcode when they discovered the problem, they are still being sued for unknowingly shipping a defective product before it was corrected.

    Your post only serves to highlight the staggering double standard faced by hardware and software companies. A software company is not even required to fix bugs after being informed of them, while a hardware company can be sued even if they corrected a bug as soon as they found it.

  • While I think the actual ruling of the lawsuit seems unfair, I think this is all some kind of karmic justice for Toshiba. Does anyone remember in the late 1980s when Toshiba sold state-of-the-art American submarine secrets to the Soviets? I think Toshiba got off very lightly for one reason or another. Anyways, perhaps this is karma coming back to say hi. Does anyone have any URLs for this Toshiba submarine scandal, or know of any details?

  • About time... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I develop custom solutions, hardware and software. When our customers find anything wrong with our products, they hold us responsible. Some little bug in the software? They expect us to put right straight away. If your car spontaneously bursts into flames while in the garage, burning down half the house in the process, and you discover that this is a common fault with your model due too design default, you would sue! Many people and organisations are now dependent on information technology, it is not a gadget. We have the features we need, what the industry needs is quality responsibility and reliability. Hopefully such lawsuits will change the industry, making it increase sales by offering ever better engineered products rather than more features.
  • These lawsuits show how unsufficient the jury system is for cases like this where the jury is likely to be clueless.

    The jury is clueless by design. In fact, showing some knowledge of the subject at hand is usually enough cause for one of the attorneys to bounce you off the jury. Rationale being, I suppose, that if the jury knows nothing of the subject, you avoid having cliques of clueful geeks tieing up the legal process with irrelevantly useful arguments.

    "Throw her in the Trough of Truth!" :)

  • What about the possibility of the companies filing counter-suits against those sueing them? They could claim frivolous lawsuits or damage to reputation. After a handful of people loose those cases, they'd probably be a lot less likely to persue such lawsuits just for a quick buck.

    Alternatively, we could wait until the trail date and just take out all the jerks suing....
  • Or maybe it's time to get rid of juries again. I've always felt it is best to let people who know the law do the lawsuits, not just some random person picked up from the street.

    //rdj
  • This is partially the result of how the US prices lawsuit awards. I.e. The Judge decides how much you deserve to suffer for committing a particular act, then they charge a some that will cause that.

    I.e. Loss of life requires shedding of tears and sleepless nights so they will send you to the edge of bankruptcy.
  • Man, I should go and sue someone... I think the floppy on my desktop computer's a Toshiba, and I usually get BSoWOs (Blue Screen of Write Error.... not quite so lethal as BSoDs, but irritating) when I write to it.

    It's so easy to sue someone nowadays. Maybe there'll be a checkbox on the 1040 forms with "Lawsuits" as primary source of income...

    ------------

  • Maybe you should let Webster know when you find out...
  • I am all against frivolous lawsuits is the first thing I would like to say...

    ... however the software and hardware industries need to be more accountable for their products. As I work for a smaller web and multimedia-design company, we are very aware that delivering our clients a reliable, working product is very important.

    I have read some discussion lately of new laws that would potentially allow US software companies to supply warranties that absolve them of all responsibility from bugs their software causes.

    Personally, I feel that I would rather have soft(/hard)ware companies be held *more* responsible for their products than less. However a lawsuit of this type seems ridiculous as well. We need something inbetween - but if companies have warranties that protect them when they ship faulty products, what can we do to threaten them with the message that delivering reliable products is what the consumers want?

    Thankfully the Open Source and Free Software movements seem to be helping increase software reliability through peer checking. Let's just hope that such systems become more pervasive in the next millennium and filter through to the hardware companies as well. It would be nice (though unrealistic) if we could make lawyers redundant through cooperation and open working methods ;-)

  • How can this happen?

    We're talking about hard working people at Toshiba. Imagine if they had _lost_ the lawsuit! It'd be the end of the company.

    We have people losing their lives working for Toshiba on one side and then suddenly because of one minor, theoretical issue the company closes 1999 with a deficit and gets hit financially like never before.

    Worse yet: we have other rounds of nonsense while other companies are getting sued in the process. When will it stop? Can it stop?

    How hard is it for a judge now to say "no, I won't let you win the case"? If one does, how does Toshiba stay then? If one doesn't, will we have to endure this process of stealing hard-earned money forever?

    I'm not a lawyer, but perhaps someone can clarify me on this: is there any way to revert Toshiba's case and for them not to pay the 2.1 billion dollars?

    Flavio
  • Wouldn't do any good. Microsoft would simply move all it's money off-shore, claim it couldn't pay, file for bankrupcy, get the fine anulled, transfer the money back, post 100 billion in earnings (by going from bankrupt to being the richest company in the world), have it's shares sky-rocket with the news, and use some of the gains to pay the local authorities to build an Interstate through your house.
  • Computer manufacturers offer warranties on their products just like any other company that makes a product.

    Yes, but when a company will outright refuse to acknowledge that their part could even be remotely part of the problem, and thus refuses to honor its warranty terms, even under the guise of good customer service, then we, the CUSTOMERS (NOT the companies), are the ones who ultimately get fucked. Think of Microsoft: "It's not a Bug, it's a Feature". Now, what IF Toshiba actually was OEMing FDC chips that were randomly dropping bits, and they say, "well, sorry, we can't reproduce the problem" or, "it's a security feature. makes your files harder to be read", blah blah blah. Now, where do the people on the end of the line who bought this with an implicit trust that it WORKED and who find out that their data is HOSED go to? Nowhere? No, there's gotta be something better than that...



    When the part is defective, they issue a recall. Some, like Dell with the Western Digital issue are proactive and call their customers to let them know when the technician will be coming out to replace the drive.



    This is good. But it could have been, and probably was, floated around the board room to ignore the issue entirely, and just issue a big "C'est la vie" press release along with a bunch of legal BS that absolved Dell of any wrongdoing.



    Others try to bury it under the rug.



    Do you work for Microsoft or Intel?



    Neither really deserves sued. That's why we have places like the Better Business Bureau.



    Au contraire. The companies that refuse to acknowledge even the remotest possibility that there is a problem even in the face of damning evidence deserve, no, are ASKING, to be sued. Since companies (not the people who work for them) are for the most part immune to the criminal court system, the civil system is the only place for you and I, real people, to take to task non-real entities, corporations, for damages done to us as individuals. While I agree that rampant sueage tends to make everything more expensive, right now it is the only check on the system. Without it, companies can operate without fear of retribution, basically. Sure, I might get a big protest about a company started and people stop buying their stuff, and the company might change, but the shareholders could also just blow off the issue, transfer company assets to other companies, and let the company die, as well, because most of its blood and energy have been transferred elsewhere, so no big deal, to them.



    You report a company for slow response, write letters to the CEO, call and complain because the product ise not working as designed, and I can't believe you wouldn't recieve service.



    The BBB does not, and probably cannot, do a very good job of advertising its information and ratings, and there are plenty of corporations who don't give a shit about you or me, because they know that their shareholders don't give a shit about you or me, and that while the negative press might be bad for a short term, people...consumers... are like so many drug addicts, and the game is to continue to keep stringing them...US...along, because the odds are that most of us will simply ignore the bad press after some short period.



    Sure, we should probably all check with the BBB before dealing with all sorts of stuff. But if that was the case, then I would continue to rely on Microsoft press releases to tell me how bad all the other software in the world was as well.



    And, how realistic is it to call the BBB to find out whether the Toshiba FDC on your Intel Motherboard in your Dell PC is faulty or not?



    I'd prefer to work with and buy products from a proactive company, but I sure can't see myself involved in a class action lawsuit against a pretty reputable company unless I wanted to damage them.



    ...Me, too, but what if that company has damaged you?



    I'd take care of the issue myself and maybe even take them to small claims court where the issue belongs. At least that way I would get full compensation.



    Sure, but let's say you run a consulting company that does a couple of million dollars of work a year, and this faulty hardware caused you to bonk on a big (>$5000) contract because you toasted your client's work because of the bad hardware... Small Claims court is only for damages less than like $5000 or so, and you can't really do the big ol' multi-party suit there, either, and this kind of stuff is just not the realm for small claims court anyways.

    Besides, Small claims court is not exactly legally binding, either. If you succeed, you can't easily then get the money from the losing party...
  • First, the suers should be liable to be sued back if their claims are shown to be unsubstantiated, to avoid this 'buy-a-lottery-ticket-suits'.

    Generally, if you bring forth a suit and lose, you have to pay the other's legal costs, and perhaps some damages as well, for "inconveniencing" them, especially if the judge decides that your case has no merit in a pre-trial motion...



    Probably seen more between companies, if you sue someone in a possibly slanderous or libelous way, you can also counter-sue... but you can't just counter-sue as a matter of principal...



    Second, what about the modern warranties, those that say 'This product is sold in hopes that it will be useful, but we don't claim anything about it, particularly fitness for any particular purpose'?



    Software "licenses" are the only things that really do this. Real things have various consumer laws on them that don't let them do this, etc. While it is pretty obvious what a Dewalt cordless drill does, it is also pretty easy with that drill to argue what its "intended" purpose is, and argue usability, etc., within those "common sense" confines.



    Maybe if you put a marketroid and a lawyer in the same room, they will cancel each other in an explosion of hype/downplay reaction.
    Wouldn't that be nice? Less marketroids, less lawyers, more energy! (not necessarily fit for any particular purpose)



    Lawyers are bad, until you need one, but I don't think they cancel out marketeers or sales droids.
  • No one is saying Toshiba or other computer manufacturers shouldn't be punished for faulty equipment. WE are saying that a $2,000,000,000 settlement of which the lawyers recieve the majority of the money is unfair. Did you also read the part about the plaintifs not even _owning_ a Toshiba laptop?
  • Umm... the mechanism for suing already works this way in most places: Loser pays and attornies working on contingency or for free...
  • I see the possible downside to suing a company for selling a faulty product, losing and then being sued back. Sounds both horrible and possible. I was talking about 'blanket suits' like the ones here, in which there isn't even real damage, but only people betting on the legal system. I can almost see it: instead of 'Lucky Striker on the fourth race' it'll be 'Skeksis Instruments in North Carolina'... that should be stopped.

    Also, lawyers are bad, even if you need one. Marketroids are bad too even if not as dangerous, but you sometimes need one even if you're not in trouble!

    And lastly yes, I should have known about the ridiculous licenses we see for software being only for software. Now, if you compare the software license agreements (the Microsoft EULA for example), produced by lawyers, with the ads for THOSE SAME PRODUCTS, produced by the marketing people, you'd think they could cancel each other. Just now I realize that what you need to make a real explosion is putting any of them in contact with reality. Now all I need is some reality: do you have any?
  • Let's see. I am now snippy, delusionary,troubled, a hypocritical bigot and an extremist-socialist-totalitarian freak, Did I miss anything?

    I don't begrudge big business from making a buck. Heck, I don't begrudge them from making a billion bucks. I understand big business is there to make the shareholders happy. I have a problem when their mission conflicts with putting out quality and safe products.

    You say that no one has been affected by Toshiba's negligence. How do you know? Most of the people who are eligible for redress aren't even aware of the court decision yet. Toshiba will be placing full-page ads in papers to notify them. Even if no one steps forth and says "I was damaged in the following way..." , it doesn't prove that there weren't indeed damages. Because most of the computer industry has the same indifferent attitude that Toshiba does -- a couple of bugs won't kill ya, would ya like a service pak with them fries? -- there may well be people who realize they lost data but had no clue as to whom should be blamed.

    The end result is Toshiba failed it's shareholders by not removing any potential liabilities that they were aware of. If Toshiba honestly was not aware of the problem, they would still be responisble for damages. But having prior knowledge makes it easy for me to feel no sympathy for them at all.

    I wasn't attacking you. I do think, however, that you were attacking the tort system and the jury system based on this one case. I take offense to that. Show me the injustice of this case and maybe I'll come around to your side. It appears that your only objection is that no one was damaged by the bug. As I've mentioned previously, the product was faulty so Toshiba isn't being punished. They are merely doing what they should have done in the first place -- providing a quality replacement product (or voucher) at their expense.
  • Exactly. There really should be a body of professional jurors, who understand the law as well as thier own areas of study. The idiocy of some of the jurys they come up with these days is stifling. You see these geniouses interviewed on TV, and they will actually admit to ignoring judicial directives, to having thier mind made up from the start, or of convincting someone even when they had more than reasonable doubt.

    The bottom line is that both defence attorneys and procecutors love a stupid jury. If they only had a well informed body of jurors to select from, they would be stuck actually trying the case on its merits instead of turning it into a circus.

    Of course, with a professional jury there are seperate issues: How do you become one? How is thier integrity ensured? How can they be kept from harm inflicted by the losing party? How can you make certain that they are not acting upon thier own agenda? But, most of these issues still exist with the "random" selection we have today. The most important thing would be to make sure that juries were neither elected (justice is not an issue of popular opinion), nor chosen by an impartial or wrongly motivated group, nor chosen by and for a particular geographic location. A body of judges, lawyers, and perhaps some sort of third entity could assure that jurors were selected based on intellect, understanding of the law, and objectivity.

    If it would work, you would see a lot less cases of "Man aquited because he is a pretty-boy" or "Woman sentenced to death for stealing remote control from husband".

    -Paul
  • It isn't all about an easy buck - there are more things to life than that. Believe it or not.

    Try telling that to big business.
  • Just adopt the English concept of "loser pays". If you file a suit because you weigh 400 pounds and a 150 pound labelled ladder broke, and the suit is lost, you pay both sides' attorney fees. IMHO this would keep a lot of cases out of court - lawyers would take cases only where their client was willing to pay (i.e., had a principle to go for) or the defendant was pretty clearly in the wrong.
  • I heard (a VERY long while back) that the Pentiums had a very minute FPU error (after some cryptically large number)... Wonder if anyone has sued them for that?
  • Well, I woundlty rely on floppys anyway to hold data.
  • To use an analogy, car manufacturers have known for years how to create a car so durable, so safe, so secure to the passengers of the car, that a passenger can pretty much walk away from a 120+MPH collision with a brick wall.
    No they haven't; hitting a wall (head-on) at 120 MPH, even in an Indy car, is simply not survivable.What the Indy car can do is bounce off the wall at maybe 50-60 MPH speed (perpendicular to the wall; speed parallel to the wall doesn't affect the impact severity much) and dissipate the energy by crumpling and shedding the wheels and suspension, meanwhile sliding to a stop along the asphalt; it can manage this because the wheels are stuck out on struts, well away from the driver's quarters.In a vehicle built for the street you must remain inside lanes too narrow to accomodate the extra crush space, so you can't get the safety factors which can be built into the race car (unless you want to drive something like a single-seat Hummer).
    --
  • "I'm not a lawyer, but perhaps someone can clarify me on this: is there any way to revert Toshiba's case and for them not to pay the 2.1 billion dollars?"

    No, there's no way to revert Toshiba's case since they never went to court. They settled out of court. I suppose they could refuse to pay the money and then go to court.

  • The "not fit for any purpose" clauses *could* be invalid in the UK under the "unfair clauses in contract" sections of the contract law, just a thuoght but it could mean that MS could be open to law suits in the UK, dunno about the US though.

    Besides MS could argue that people bought the product in the knowledge that it contained bugs, as it was common knowledge :)
  • What disturbs me the most about this type of class action suit is that the consumers seldom get more than a token award: a coupon towards the purchase of another of the manufacturer's products, or a few hundred dollars. Meantime, the lawyers collect millions in fees. I understand that these suits often get started when a law firm gets word of a problem and recruits "harmed" consumers to representative of the class. It's legalized extortion on the part of the law firms, nothing else.

    I'm wary of tort reform as it has been presented in the past, because it tends to rob consumers of their rights to recompense for real damages. But I think some restrictions on legal fees would do wonders for the legal system. If lawyers could collect only a reasonable amount, we'd see fewer extortion suits, but consumers with real complaints would not be restricted in their rights to sue and collect damages.

  • The jury system is NOT at fault... (Score:4)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @02:20AM (#1570419) Homepage Journal
    The problem is not the jury system per se. Yes, the jurors may be clueless about the subject, that is why the attourneys on both sides have to present the facts (as they see them) so that the jury can decide the case.


    The problem is that most people today are incapable of

    • Listening to facts
    • Remembering the facts
    • Following a chain of logic
    • Going with the logical choice no matter what their personal feelings are

    Instead, the jurors make a snap, emotional decision, then stick with it, regardless of the facts or reason. In a case like this, the jurors say "You've suffered (somehow), and so we're going to give you a large sum of money. After all, WE aren't paying for it, insurance is." Of course, insurance isn't paying it, we are (via higher costs, premiums, etc.) but all the jurors want it to get back to watching Wheel of Fortune.


    Perhaps instead of the current means of jury selection (Show up on this date or else!), what we should do is more like /. moderation:


    Congratulations! You've been awarded a chance to make the world a better place and serve on a jury. You may redeem the enclosed token for a chance to sit on a jury anytime within the next three months. If you don't want to take part in the American Legal system, just drop the token into any US Mail box.

    This way:
    1. People who don't want to be on a jury won't be. If you don't care, I don't want you there.
    2. People like me, who would serve if possible but are too important to be yanked away from work with little warning could make arrangments. As it is now, if I got a jury notice, my employer would swear blind (truthfully) that my absense would cause great harm to the company, and the system would let me skip (not reschedule, skip).
    3. Hopefully, this would change jury duty from a chore to a privilege (Remember Tom Sawyer? "Not everybody can paint a fence like this")

    Of course, the system would still have to compel employers to allow employees to take jury duty time without using vacation time, but they do this for Reserve duty anyway.


    Of course, we'd then need MetaJury duty (review these 10 cases and decide it they were unfair, fair, or no opinion...)


  • Ratface typed randomly at his keyboard and spelt out: Personally, I feel that I would rather have soft(/hard)ware companies be held *more* responsible for their products than less. However a lawsuit of this type seems ridiculous as well. We need something inbetween - but if companies have warranties that protect them when they ship faulty products, what can we do to threaten them with the message that delivering reliable products is what the consumers want?


    Well... if this is the case as you suggest it *does* leave a big hole for companies that are willing to provide software/hardware with decent warranties and who will take responsibility. If this happens it leaves the door open for smaller calue added companies who are willing to take risks and are more likely to win. Following a this argument to it's logical conclusion means that people will be scared away from the big no-nonsense no support corporations to the smaller manufacturer. Could this be the downfall?

    You also have to remember that part of the GPL states that no support is given and that if it is broken or doesnt work for you *TOUGH*. That old phrase "mileage may vary" springs to mind. It's very much the same with licensed software.

    There is a scary trend in the commercial software world where you pay $xxx for a largely shoddy product with known bugs, then you have to pay another $xxx for support to fix the bugs that were in the product when it shipped!! - All done under the guise of support saying 'well it works on our system' - Perhaps a symptom of the diverse hardware and software market that now exists. Perhaps not... I do not wish to make cynical statements.

    There is only one easy answer... talk with your money. If you are worried about it - don't buy it. There are almost always alternatives out there that are a) cost free or covered by a GPL and b) come with support cost free (isn't that one of the many great things about the interenet).

    While I am not a huge raving fan of the GPL it *does* have it's benefits, and they are to both the developer and the user. It's a no-lose situation.

    Anything stated in this email is purely the opinion of the author, please don't shoot him.

  • The brighter side of litigation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are clearly excesses in litigation in the US, driven by the size of the damage awards and the compensation of the lawyers. This does not mean that lawsuits don't have some benefits.

    Manufacturers of autos, consumer products, food, and prescription drugs have all been adversely affected by lawsuits. The result has been safer products of generally higher quality, albeit more expensive and equipped with patronizing warning labels. It is reasonable to expect a similar pattern with the rash of suits against hardware companies. Better, but more expensive products, with more and more outrageous disclaimers.

    In the end, as McDonalds (the coffee burn), GM (fuel tank placement), and the tobacco industry found out, it is not unknown problems that hurt you so much as not fixing a known problem, or worse, being calculating in your decision not to fix the problem. This was what Toshiba feared and why they settled.

    If you want to see what an industry without regulation or liability looks like, look no further than the software industry. You have rapid development, relatively inexpensive products, but weak quality. As they say, if cars were built like software, they would go 1000 miles in 10 minutes on a pint of gas (metric be damned!!!) but they could stop inexplicably at any time and each day there would be a one in a thousand chance that your car would simply blow up.

    In the end billions in jury awards seem like a steep price to pay for corporate responsibility, but as /.'ers are fond of pointing out, corporations don't understand anything except the bottom line, so any punishment for bad behavior has to involve significant amounts of money. I'd just as soon the money be divided among the ostensible victims as the result of a civil suit rather than be given to the government. That being said, any attempts to rationalize the system that don't silence legitimate complaints or needlessly coddle industry are fine by me.
  • I can't tell you why my Nick wasn't attached to my reply. Now it is.


    Have fun with you "legal system" - it sure needs some hacking.


    Niels Kristian Jensen

  • I agree that litigation is way out of hand, but companies need to be held accoutable.

    Accountable for what, exactly? The plaintiffs didn't claim to have actually lost data, much less valuable data; they just said it was theoretically possible. Toshiba should pay full damages: $0.

    And if you want to talk punitive damages to teach Toshiba a lesson for even taking the risk, then do you really think $2 billion is a fair price?

  • Re:i wonder... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "The pathology of victimization is an amazing sociological phenomenon! The extent to which victims become complicit, even helpful, in their own demise is truly astonishing. I'm reminded of the jews that were employed in concentration camps during WW2 to keep their brethren in line."

    Why don't you look up Godwin's Law, and quit spouting bullshit. The defect was so minor, it never actually affected anyone, this is gold digging plain and simple and raises the price of goods for everyone.


  • This whole ordeal just goes to point out the stark contrast between the ethics guiding the hardware and the software industries. Hardware is expected to fix known bugs and it does. Software on the other hand, has virutally all the factors which could reform it removed. You can't sue a software manufacturer due to all those in package liscense agreements (not alwasy enforcable, though if UCITA [badsoftware.com] is passed, they'll be quite a bit more so). MS has gotten the government to agree to make laws protecting them, claiming that software can't be perfect, all the while raving about how secure its products are. So as repulsive as this lawsuit is, I'm glad that we have them. Because so far its lawsuits like this (along with a reasonable level of industry competition) which has kept the industry producing stuff that actually works.
  • perhaps i should have been more clear - i'm talking about Compaq, etc. being sued. if you'll notice, the post was in response not to the article about toshiba, but about the other companies.

  • disagree (Score:1)

    by / ( 33804 )
    1. At least in NY, juries pay less than minimum wage. For some retail jobs, one of the perks is that the company will pay you the difference between what you get from jury duty and what you would've gotten if you'd worked. Lots of people don't have such a standing offer.

    2. You're more wrong than you think. Batson v. Kentucky said it's unconsitutional for prosecutors to use preemptory challenges to exclude jurors because of race. J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel said that it's unconstitutional to do the same for sex. It was the accused's race and gender that were being excluded in each of these cases.

    And most of all, your jurisprudence of original intent falls on its face, especially in terms of voting. Nearly every one of the amendments passed since the bill of rights has extended the right to vote to more and more people, until we reach the present where for all intents and purposes it's "one person one vote".

    (Go ahead and look at Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson for some examples of what sort of horrors a jurisprudence of original intent can wreak. It's with good reason that Bork isn't sitting on the Courttoday.)
  • What a bunch of thankless bastards. When they bought their machines, they gained the ability to do things that would have been superhuman a decade before. They no doubt clamored over each other in lines to buy these wonderful new machines, and the machines advanced their carreers and incomes and quality of life in far-reaching ways. The sweat and labor of the world's brightest minds brought them this capacity, and all their dim bulbs can muster is "my floppy drive was flaky. I deserve a settlement because although everything else worked beyond my wildest expectations, the floppy drive lost a byte on sundays during 5th month of a leap year, but only if there was a gibbous moon." Screw it! I'm gonna buy a big gun and move to Montana. This shit is getting out of hand.
  • me thinking that damages awarded in the US is neither based on emotions (I couldn't care less, since for now it doesn't affect me) nor is it only based on this case. damages awarded in the US are in general higher than those in the netherlands (I cannot comment on other countries since I don't know). Proof? the whole discussion about the amount of damages here, that are getting higher and higher. or at least.. the damages that are claimed, not necessarily those that are actually approved.

    //rdj

  • Re:Doh! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Having a reputation as the most litigous country on the planet, one must wonder whether the US risks becoming a place where companies may decide not to do business in the future. Frivolous product liability lawsuits rarely correct product defects (real or imaginary), or compensates consumers. They only serve to line the pockets of [obscenely wealthy] lawyers at the expense of all others. There is something most of the world has realized, with the exception of America (and you yanks won't like hearing it, but here it is anyway): The world is not a perfect place. It never was. It never will be. Mistakes are made, but life goes on. Live with it.
  • First, the suers should be liable to be sued back if their claims are shown to be unsubstantiated, to avoid this 'buy-a-lottery-ticket-suits'.

    Second, what about the modern warranties, those that say 'This product is sold in hopes that it will be useful, but we don't claim anything about it, particularly fitness for any particular purpose'? Maybe if you put a marketroid and a lawyer in the same room, they will cancel each other in an explosion of hype/downplay reaction.
    Wouldn't that be nice? Less marketroids, less lawyers, more energy! (not necessarily fit for any particular purpose)

    JM
  • It's unfair to blame the jury. Every case in the US justice system is subject to a trial by jury consisting of peers. That's the way it was set up, and it's a damn lot better than most other countries out there. There may be times when the jury is "clueless" regarding the issue at hand, but it's a check and balance that our country set up to prevent abuse of the justice system. The solution to their cluelessness? That's what the trial is for! The side that's worried about the jury being clueless will present the information they need in a way they will understand it. The side that wants to prey on their ignorance will put up a big emotional show while ignoring the technical bit.

    Sorry, but I happent to *like* America.

    -Chris
  • The problem here is not that Toshiba is being sued or that they might have
    substantial penalties assessed against them (the suit might very well be
    a reasonable and valid one) - the problem is that in the US you can bring a
    lawsuit against a company or person with no risk whatsoever to yourself.


    Think about these other mechanisms for potentially becoming wealthy:

    • Gambling
    • Playing the stock market
    • Speculating on futures
    • Investing in a promising startup
    • Starting your own business


    In every case the opportunity for massive financial advancement is present
    (just like in a lawsuit) but in every case *you* are required to risk something
    initially in order to make yourself eligable for those financial windfalls.


    I have had enough of this horsesh*t, what we need to do is:

    • Institute "loser pays" laws - if you bring suit and do not prove
      your case you pay the entirety of your opponent's legal fees
      plus an additional penalty for the time you have wasted
    • If a client has a good case but could not afford to pay the opposing
      side's fees an attorney is free to shoulder the burden in exchange
      for a healthy percentage should the case be proven


    Lawsuit abuse costs us all, you can see the toll it has taken in
    the cost of insurance, health care and many of the products we buy. We
    are have become a nation of freeloaders and leeches and I don't believe
    I am alone when I state that I am sick of it.

  • Does that mean, we will soon have "no warranty" disclaimers on every piece of hardware? "Should your new processor prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction" ;)
  • IANAL.

    My mother is, though, and I typed a lot of her papers during law school, and one thing I noticed is: as stupid as our legal system is, stupidity is really not a design goal. The current US legal system is based on precedent; well-intentioned people following precepts handed down from previous cases, trying to use common sense to apply these principles to new cases. Look where it gets us.

    I'm not sure if scrapping the jury system is the answer, or scrapping the adversarial system, or re-instating the Trough of Truth, but it's for damn sure something needs to change....

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