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To: Don Green who wrote (36652)	1/19/2000 1:18:00 PM
From: Dave B	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Don, Tell that, to anyone who has ever dealt with the Japanese. As the following article shows, Toshiba caved on the floppy drive controller lawsuit within a matter of months of the filing of the lawsuit. They paid $2.1B (even though this article says $1B). Of course it helped that in the discovery process they found a memo from a Toshiba engineer in the late 80s that said we have this problem that can corrupt data and we should fix it immediately (I'm paraphrasing). I would have to imagine that the fear of having to pay royalties on all SDRAM shipped since its inception might have an equally chilling effect. Dave p.s. Apparently, Beaumont, Texas is a great place for filing law suits. Very plaintiff friendly, according to the lawyers who talked to us. p.p.s. There has never been a case of anyone losing data due to the bug in the floppy controller. This lawsuit was filed solely on the grounds that they knew about the bug and should have fixed it. p.p.p.s. This was a class action lawsuit -- did anyone on this thread get their share of the settlement? ------------ Toshiba reaches floppy disk settlement. United Press International, Oct 29, 1999 p1008302u1918 Full Text TOKYO, Oct. 29 (UPI) Toshiba's fears of having to pay an astronomical amount of money if it lost a class action lawsuit filed against it prompted the corporation to reach a settlement of $1 billion Thursday over a floppy disk drive controller in its notebook personal computers. The Japanese electronics manufacturer said Friday that it will revise its earnings projections for the current fiscal year, already in the red, to an unconsolidated net loss of 65 billion yen ($619 million). The company had previously projected an unconsolidated net loss of 30 billion yen ($286 million) for the business year, which ends March 31. ``Its very regrettable but we have no choice but to follow U.S. legal customs with tears,' Toshiba's president, Taizo Nishimuro, told a press conference. ``If we lost the suit, we would have to pay nearly 1 trillion yen ($95 billion) in damages and our existence as a company could be jeopardized.' Two U.S. owners of Toshiba personal computers who alleged that a defect in the disk drive could cause data on disks to be lost or corrupted filed the lawsuit earlier this year with the U.S. Federal Court in Texas. Toshiba said the two plaintiffs were the only customers to complain about the disk drive and that it is therefore not responsible for it. The company which has sold about five million Personal computers with the component said that it will incorporate a new floppy disk drive in PCs manufactured for sale in the United States and will provide U.S. customers with software to fix the drive or change the hardware. In addition, it gives a $100 coupon to U.S. owners of Toshiba PCs if the warranties are due to expire March 5. Those whose warranties are due to expire beyond that date will receive coupons valued between $200 to $250 and cash refunds will be available for more recent purchasers. - Copyright 1999 by United Press International.