A new class-action threat.It had to happen sooner or later: a class-action lawsuit based on a software publisher's alleged failure to fix buggy Refers to software that contains many flaws. Many in the software industry swear that bugs are inevitable, and perhaps they are right. As long as we work in the competitive, pressure-cooker environment of our high-tech world, products will more often than not be developed too hastily and software. The unhappy defendant is Corel Corp., the Canadian developer of a top-selling graphics program, CorelDraw. The plaintiff is Jeffrey Fishbein, a Pennsylvania disk jockey who wants $50,000 in damages for himself and for at least 720,000 other CorelDraw users who, he claims, suffered from Corel's "reckless, deliberate, and willful Intentional; not accidental; voluntary; designed. There is no precise definition of the term willful because its meaning largely depends on the context in which it appears. " failure to ship bug-free products. (For those who like big numbers, the potential damages work out to a tidy $36 billion dollars.) Not surprisingly, the real force behind the case is one of the country's most aggressive purveyors of class-action suits Noun 1. class-action suit - a lawsuit brought by a representative member of a large group of people on behalf of all members of the group class action , Philadelphia-based Levy & Angstreich, who apparently recruited Fishbein as their token "class" representative. Fishbein's presence gives Levy & Angstreich a distinct home court advantage: The case is due to be heard in rural Pennsylvania's Snyder County Court of Common Pleas--the sort of court that every once in a while decides to whack whack - According to arch-hacker James Gosling, to "...modify a program with no idea whatsoever how it works." (See whacker.) It is actually possible to do this in nontrivial circumstances if the change is small and well-defined and you are very good at glarking things from context. corporate defendants with multi-million-dollar damage awards. Fishbein claims that Corel prematurely shipped untested products "in an effort to placate pla·cate tr.v. pla·cat·ed, pla·cat·ing, pla·cates To allay the anger of, especially by making concessions; appease. See Synonyms at pacify. shareholders," failed to warn customers of known bugs, and then didn't ship necessary patches or fixes. Fishbein (who says he bought three different versions of CorelDraw) also complains that Corel's warranty form "warrants the diskettes the program comes on, but says that if the program doesn't work, that's my problem." What makes the Corel case worth watching is Levy & Angstreich's attempt to turn Fishbein's claims into a wider-reaching class-action case. If that attempt succeeds--or if Corel settles out of court, which we suspect is more likely--it's an ominous precedent for the rest of the shrink-wrapped software Refers to store-bought software, implying a standard platform that is widely supported. industry. Public companies already pay out millions of dollars to settle frivolous class-action securities lawsuits; the Corel case may just open the door to an even more dangerous form of legal blackmail blackmail, in law, exaction of money from another by threat of exposure of criminal action or of disreputable conduct. The term was originally used for the tribute levied until the 18th cent. . |
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