Dell faces court date over faulty laptops

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 8 Feb 2010 at 08:55

Dell has been ordered back to court to face charges that it knowingly sold defective laptops.

A panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed a federal district court's 2008 dismissal of the case against Dell. That dismissal followed the plaintiffs' refusal to comply with a district court order that their claims be arbitrated.

In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that Dell violated California consumer laws by selling Inspiron notebooks that had inadequate cooling systems, power supplies and motherboards.

Dell has fought very, very hard... (but) we got the courtroom doors open, which was our primary goal

They said the defects caused their notebooks to shut down without warning, fail to boot up, or deteriorate too quickly. The notebooks were bought between July 2004 and January 2005. It is not clear how many customers were affected.

In the ruling, Judge Lyle Strom said the district court abused its discretion in dismissing the case and "the public's interest in a resolution on the merits weighed strongly" in favor of letting the case continue.

The judge also called it "unconscionable" to enforce a provision in customers' sales contracts requiring arbitration, in part because customers may decide not to pursue claims over the $1,200 to $1,500 computers individually.

"Dell has fought very, very hard," said Jonathan Selbin, a New York-based partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP representing the plaintiffs. "We got the courtroom doors open, which was our primary goal."

The appeals court sent the case back to the district court for further proceedings. Strom is a senior district court judge in Nebraska, who was sitting in California by designation.