The Lawsuit Against a Japanese Computer Company
By: jeremy esposito | Posted: 26th October 2010
Devising a scheme to take a big byte out of the laptop computer industry was done by a Texas personal injury lawyer. Create a lawsuit against a company for a nonexistent problem. If you are one of those involved in selling laptop computers, then you shouldn't be laughing about this. Price increases may result from the fact that copycat lawsuits have also been filed against other companies as well.
Having filed a $9 billion lawsuit against a Japanese company specializing in appliances, a lawyer who was involved also in a lawsuit against a tobacco company managed to extract a settlement of $2 billion from the Japanese company. This company, also the world's leading maker of laptop computers, decided to settle the suit late last month rather than take the risk of losing a bigger bundle in a Texas courtroom.
It was through this settlement that a group of lawyers managed to earn around $147 million in contingency fees. The company also gave cash rebates and discount coupons to the millions who had already bought their notebook computers during the last ten years. Last March, two men who owned laptop computers became the plaintiffs responsible for the lawsuit.
The men, who received $25,000 each from the settlement, claimed a design flaw might, under extreme conditions, cause corruption or loss of data, when the laptops transferred data to a floppy disc. This flaw did not affect these men in any way, however.
No complaint had ever reached the Japanese corporation before about this so called defect. The company received no complaints from its customers until the lawsuit was filed last March. There had been no loss of data found by the company when they ran extensive laboratory tests.
$9 billion would not have been the only cost paid by the Japanese company if they lost the trial. Many legal observers claim that the case was easily defensible and that the company's surrender was dropping meat with blood into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The sound of the splash did not even disappear yet, but the sharks were already there. Manufacturers who used the NEC floppy control chip were suddenly faced with copycat class action lawsuits filed by personal injury lawyers.
Layoffs are becoming a possibility now that these businesses are being hit by copycat lawsuits. If you think things were bad for it, it just got worse. These billion dollar settlements may cause personal computer prices to go up, a New York financial analyst stated. In the last two decades, the United States has been quite financially stable because of the low inflation that was partly caused by falling computer prices.
A few hundred dollars are all you need to buy low priced computers that work faster and more efficiently than those models that cost thousands two decades ago. Bullying laptop manufacturers into submission with lawsuits would definitely lead to an increase in the prices of personal computers. Those who have to work two jobs just to make ends meet will not like this.
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Tags: discount coupons, last ten years, cash rebates, notebook computers, personal injury lawyer, gulf of mexico, price increases, laboratory tests, extreme conditions, japanese company, laptop computers