Vista Capable suit no longer has class

20.02.2009
First disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. (For which the American Bar Association should be extremely grateful.)

Second disclaimer: This is not a legal -- or should I say, law -- blog. Whether it's an illegal blog is another matter entirely.

Yet for . Now writing about law suits is usually about as much fun for me as writing about gastro-intestinal diseases, and often with the same deleterious effect on my digestion. Doing two of them in a row... well, I might be laid up for weeks. But I feel compelled to do it anyway.

It appears the same judge who certified the Vista Capable suit as a class action last year . Her reasoning: Plaintiffs did not prove that the mere act of slapping a misleading label on the box meant consumers paid more for their PCs.

OK, that may be true. But it still seems to me they didn't get the PCs they thought they'd paid for. I'm having a bit of a problem with this, and I'm hoping the sage legal minds out in Cringeville can help me out.

If I buy a car that says "Porsche" on it for US$20,000, only to take it home and find out it's really just a Yugo with a fancy logo, I still only spent $20,000. The car I really wanted probably cost closer to $30,000 (yes, I know, a Porsche usually costs a lot more than that -- but humor me here). That Yugo probably should have cost $10,000 (or a lot less).