Judge kills class-action status in 'Vista Capable' suit

A federal judge late Friday refused to restore class-action status to the Vista Capable lawsuit, handing Microsoft Corp. its second major victory in the case in the last two months.

U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman denied a motion by the plaintiffs to recertify a smaller group of consumers in the suit that has accused Microsoft of misleading PC buyers in 2006-07 by letting computer makers slap the "Vista Capable" sticker on machines that could run only Home Basic.

Her order was the second since Feb. 18 denying class-action status to the lawsuit, and limits the plaintiffs' options to appealing her decision or moving forward with a trial of the half-dozen individual claims.

It was also the second time in as many months that Pechman's ruling went Microsoft's way. By rejecting class action status, Pechman again narrowed the pool of potential plaintiffs from thousands to the six now involved. That, in turn, would dramatically slash Microsoft's financial exposure -- which had been estimated as high as $8.5 billion -- if it eventually loses the case.

On Friday, she dismissed plaintiffs' arguments to grant class-action status to two new groups: people who had purchased PCs during Microsoft's Express Upgrade program and those who bought Vista Capable machines that wouldn't run the new operating system's Aero graphical user interface.
"Plaintiffs proposed Express Upgrade class suffers from the same flaws as its original deception-theory based Vista Capable class," Pechman wrote in her order, referring to the upgrade program Microsoft ran with its OEM partners from October 2006 to March 2007 to give PC buyers free or discounted copies of Vista. "As before, Plaintiffs underlying claim is that they were deceived by the Vista marketing campaign. Because evidence relating to each Plaintiffs' consumer choice is not amenable to class-wide analysis, an Express Upgrade class is inappropriate."

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