Microsoft Might Be Closer To Winning Xbox Class Action Lawsuit

U.S. Supreme Court justices appear to be leaning toward Microsoft Corp. in a lawsuit filed by consumers against the tech giant over its Xbox 360 product. According to a Reuters report, the justices seem to agree with Microsoft's claims that the Xbox 360 class action lawsuit should have been dismissed.

Back in 2011, Xbox 360 owners sued Microsoft over allegations that the tech giant released defective units that caused the video game console to scratch discs. The Xbox 360 owners claimed that the video game console was not properly manufactured to the point that even small vibrations could gouge discs, which then become unusable.

Only a minuscule portion of Xbox 360 owners joined the lawsuit against Microsoft, so the tech giant filed a motion to dismiss the owners' bid to secure class certification of the case. A Seattle federal judge ruled in favor of the tech giant back in 2012.

However, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the owners to appeal the dismissal of the class certification even though the case has not been fully concluded yet. To appeal the class certification dismissal, the Xbox 360 owners voluntarily dismissed their lawsuit against Microsoft, Fortune reported.

Microsoft argued that the ruling of the appeals court was unfair to it because the owners should have not been allowed to voluntarily dismiss the claims just to pursue an appeal to the class certification dismissal. Usually, consumer lawsuits that want to be certified are doing so in order to secure more damages from the defendants. A class certification dismissal could kill a lawsuit since lawyers would not want to represent them because it can sort of guarantee that the defendants can only get a small amount of damage and fee.

In another news related to technology, Jobs & Hire previously reported that one of the hackers indicted in the Yahoo! Email hack was employed by Renaissance Capital.

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