“A $1 billion trial against Apple Inc. over whether it illegally locked iPod users into iTunes will continue after a judge refused to suspend proceedings while lawyers look for another lead plaintiff,” Karen Gullo and Robert Burnson report for Bloomberg.
“Patrick Coughlin, an attorney for consumers who brought the lawsuit almost a decade ago, failed to persuade U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, today to put the trial on hold,” Gullo and Burnson report. “Rogers removed the lawsuit’s lead plaintiff yesterday following Apple’s discovery that she hadn’t directly purchased an iPod covered by the lawsuit. That revelation threatened to derail the case for Coughlin, who needs at least one lead plaintiff to pursue damages in the antitrust case.”
“Bill Isaacson, a lawyer for Cupertino, California-based Apple, complained that bringing in new named plaintiffs halfway through a trial is unfair,” Gullo and Burnson report. “‘There is a very serious issue here of prejudice to the defendant,’ he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Patrick Coughlin. The farce is strong with this one.
Related articles:
The rampant stupidity of the Apple iPod antitrust suit – December 9, 2014
News organizations fight to release Steve Jobs deposition video – December 9, 2014
Judge: Apple iPod trial will continue despite no plaintiff in case – December 9, 2014
Apple’s Eddy Cue explains why DRM for music was a necessary evil – December 5, 2014
Apple iPod judge asks if lack of plaintiff dooms trial – December 5, 2014
Apple on trial: Were iTunes updates really an anti-consumer scheme?
Steve Jobs on RealNetworks in 2011 deposition: ‘Do they still exist?’ – December 3, 2014
Steve Jobs said Apple took pains to protect record contracts – December 3, 2014
Star witness in Apple lawsuit is Steve Jobs – December 1, 2014
How to kill the DRM in your old iTunes Store music purchases – March 18, 2014
Apple asks judge to dismiss FairPlay lawsuit following Steve Jobs’ deposition – April 19, 2011
Apple’s iTunes Store goes DRM-free and 3G via iPhone; variable pricing coming soon – January 6, 2009
Major music cartels demand concessions from Apple before inking DRM-free iTunes Store music deals – December 15, 2008
RealNetworks ‘Harmony’ stops working on iPods but nobody notices for a month and a half – December 15, 2004
Real’s online petition for music ‘freedom’ backfires bigtime – August 17, 2004
Real cracks Apple’s Fairplay; to sell iPod-compatible songs without Apple’s authorization – July 25, 2004
Jobs to Glaser: Go pound sand – April 16, 2004
There needs to be systematic elimination of lawyers starting with all the ones in public office.
You could make the sentence shorter by replacing “systematic” with “all” and stopping with “lawyers”.
To be fair, substituting a plaintiff makes some sense in a class action lawsuit. The particular plaintiff at the trial isn’t the focus of the lawsuit: they are there as a representative of multiple people who fit in the definition of the class action. Changing the plaintiff, while highly irregular, doesn’t really change the nature the class action suit, so long there actually are people who fit in the class action’s definition.
I can understand why Apple’s lawyers want to actually win the case, rather than by winning on this technicality. That wouldn’t actually settle the issue brought up at the lawsuit, so the decision is unlikely to stand under scrutiny.
Agree with your point. But there is an issue of the lawyers representing the class not having done due diligence. In fact, there might need to be a little examination of how they came up with first two plaintiffs. Being harsh, I could see the class filing suit against the law firm for “malpractice” and the judge requiring this law firm to pay all costs to date. Then the judge ought to dismiss the case. If some other firm wants to carry the torch, so be it.
I’m not familiar with the fine points of the law, but isn’t that putting the cart before the horse? Let’s commence the action first, then find a plaintiff? If class action suits can commence without a plaintiff, then why have a plaintiff at all? Courts decide issues between definite parties, not possible wrongdoing that MIGHT have occurred to millions of amorphous people out there. You hang your class action suit on a named party. If that party turns out to be a bogus one, how can you then say, well, we’ll find someone else who fits the profile? You could of course file another similar action with another plaintiff, but you should not be able to continue this particular action when the peg you hanged it on is gone. Sounds ridiculous – but like I said, the law can sometimes be an a*se.
Read this article http://fortune.com/2014/12/09/how-dumb-is-this-apple-ipod-antitrust-suit/ for a good summary of the case, how the class action suit system works generally as well as som specific information on this firm.
They have been working on the idea of suing Apple over the general concept of iPod/iTunes exclusivity for many years. Suits like this while allegedly help the consumer in reality the mostly support lawyer’s inflated incomes.
“Suits like this while allegedly help the consumer in reality the mostly support lawyer’s inflated incomes.
“mostly? Try completely.
I might be in the class but have no clue when I bought my $5 shuffle. I do have a PoS brown Zune that I couldn’t use on iTunes. Does that qualify? Or maybe I should just sue Microsoft for selling PoS’s.
Just give everybody in the class that has proof of purchase a $10 off coupon for the Apple store and be done with it. That’s all they deserve.
W H A T
A
J O K E
‘Calling all qualifying plaintiffs! Hello? Is anybody there?’
Why weren’t the plaintiff qualified BEFORE this fiasco?
Ironically, the only entity that has the detailed iPod sales records to quickly identify a “replacement plaintiff” (who bought one using a personal credit card during the required time period) is probably Apple.
Yes, and there were millions of those. But how many even considered trying to download music from RealNetworks? A few, very few. How many of those few actually suffered damages as a result of Apple’s steps to prevent interoperability. Maybe the answer really is ZERO!
These law firms really believe in the interoperability concept because it offers them lots of targets to extort money from first and foremost, and to assist consumers not so much.
I had an iPod back in 2009 and not being able to sync it with my paltry RealNetwords download library was meaningless to me.
Look for ads popping up on Craig’s list…
What a waste of time, money, and resources!
Lawyers?
“Bring out your dead!”