Vista Capable case could regain class action status
Microsoft is arguing against an attempt to reinstate class action status to the ongoing ‘Vista Capable’ case. If it fails in the bid, the potential price of losing the case would be many times higher.
The case originally received class action status last year, but the judge withdrew it in February after ruling that the plaintiffs had not shown that the specific details of their case applied to every claimant who would have become attached to the case. The original class action status applied to people who’d paid more for a supposedly Vista Capable computer than they would had they known it couldn’t cope with all of Vista’s features.
The lawyers bringing the case have now applied to narrow the field of people covered by class action status. If they have their way, it would include anyone who either bought a PC through an official Microsoft ‘Express Upgrade Guarantee Program or bought a machine which couldn’t run the Aero graphics system. That’s a key point of the case as many of those claiming to have been misled say they saw Aero in advertising.
Microsoft says that this still isn’t reasonable. It argues that the only way to be sure who is covered by the classification is to interview them individually, which it says inherently rules this out as a case eligible for class action.
Class action status is much more than a legal technicality. When a case has the status, anyone who shows they have similar circumstances to the original claim can automatically join the case. Whereas a verdict usually simply acts as a precedent which other claimants can cite in their own case, an unfavorable verdict in a class action case can mean the defendant has to pay damages to everyone involved, which can easily run into many millions of dollars.
As things stand, the trial would start on April 13 but only with six plaintiffs. Even if Microsoft lost the case, anyone else who wanted to make a claim would then have to bring an individual case.
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