A previous dispute involving scratched Xbox 360 discs that stems way back will be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States. They will decide if there's enough reason for Microsoft to face class-action lawsuit. This might sound easy to most of us, however, lower courts have disagreed on the matter, resulting in an escalation to the Supreme Court.
The main issue is a lawsuit condemning the Xbox 360 consoles, the console apparently has a tendency to scratch optical discs and that Microsoft was aware of the problem. The lawsuit practically blames the scratching on a design flaw. It was mentioned that there was little to no protection in place to prevent vibrations and small movements from scratching discs and rendering them practically useless.
The lawsuit was filed in 2012. The lawsuit claimed that some 55,000 users had complained about scratched discs, some were way back in early 2008, and that Microsoft knew the issue existed before the console even launched. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit the same year because of the fact that there weren't enough people to warrant class-action litigation.
However, the decision was overturned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Microsoft is still firm on their stand that the issue isn't a design defect, but because of the mishandling of customers. The Redmond outfit claims that only a mere 0.4 percent of Xbox 360 owners disclosed disc scratching issues.
Hiroo Umeno, a manager for Microsoft, admitted to knowing about the Xbox 360's tendency to scratch discs in certain scenarios. This was revealed in a court document from 2008. "When we first discovered the problem in September or October, when we got a first report of disc movement, we knew this is what's causing the problem," Umeno reported.
The Supreme Court will be the one to judge whether or not Microsoft has to face the class action suit. It won' be anytime soon though. We'll have to check again in a few years.