subject: A Lawsuit Against A Japanese Computer Manufacturer [print this page] A Texas personal injury lawyer has found a new and highly ingenious way to take a big byte out of the laptop computer industry. You can file a lawsuit for consumers who complain about a problem that does not exist.
Do not joke about this, especially if you are involved the laptop computer market. Price increases may come out of the lawsuits that have been filed against five other companies.
A lawyer was able to get a Japanese appliance maker to propose a $2 billion settlement after slapping the company with a lawsuit of $9 billion. Instead of allowing the lawsuit to continue in the Texas court, this company which is a leading manufacturer of laptop computers, decided on settling it outside of court.
$147 million in contingency fees was what he and other lawyers got out of it. The computer manufacturer made sure to give discount coupons and even cash rebates the millions of owners who had purchased notebook computers in the past year. Last March, two men who owned laptop computers became the plaintiffs responsible for the lawsuit.
The men said that there was a mistake in the laptop's design that could put the data of the computer at risk of getting lost. Significantly, neither of the men claimed to actually have suffered any lost data or other damage as the result of the alleged flaw.
The chip manufacturer stated that it had not once received any complaint from consumers regarding this alleged defect in the technology. Not one customer ever complained about the products of the Japanese company until the lawsuit was filed by the two lawyers. The company pointed out that their extensive laboratory tests did not reveal any loss of data which may have come from the flaw.
Losing to the lawsuit in the trial court would have meant a loss much greater than just $9 billion for the Japanese company. The company's capitulation in this easily defensible case was what observers likened to throwing bloody meat into the Gulf of Mexico's waters.
The sharks already approached the moment the splash was heard. Five laptop manufacturing companies who used the NEC floppy control chip became the targets of other lawsuits filed by personal injury lawyers.
Copycat lawsuits are causing these non related businesses to consider layoffs. Not the Texas legal climate, its black eye just got worse. A New York financial analyst is predicting personal computer costs to go up as a result of these billion dollar settlements.
The financial situations in the United States have been quite good for the past twenty years partly because of falling computer prices that are said to have kept inflation low.
For a few hundred dollars, today's lowest priced computers offer thousands of times more speed and capability than models costing $5,000 or more did a mere 20 years ago. If more laptop manufacturers are threatened by lawsuits in the same manner as the Japanese company, computer prices are sure to go way higher. Those who are struggling financially will not like this.
