Herndandez vs IGE - IGE withdraws motion to stay/dismiss
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Economy, Events, real-world, MMO industry, Legal
There has been a new development with the uncertified class action Herndandez vs IGE. The Plaintiff alleges that IGE is gold-farming, spawn-camping, devaluing gold, spamming chat, and generally screwing up the experience for everyone else. Defendant IGE filed a motion to stay/dismiss in favor of arbitration on 26 October.
IGE has now changed it's stance and withdrawn that motion, and gives the impression that it will answer the complaint in court. That could only be an impression, however.
Defendant puts forward: "In Plaintiff's Response in Opposition to the Motion to Stay/Dismiss (Dkt. 28), Plaintiff has changed his position, and for the first time, now raises questions as to the existence of the very ToU or EULA agreements between IGE US and Blizzard upon which Plaintiff asserts his claims. Opposition, pp. 9-13."
Basically, IGE's position is that a move to arbitration was required by the WoW/Blizzard Terms-of-Use/EULA, and that Plaintiff has changed it's position on the validity of those agreements. This seems to be a misinterpretation of the Plaintiff's position - possibly willful, as IGE also asks for:
- An extra 20 days to respond.
- Permission to file the motion to stay/dismiss in favor of arbitration again, if it turns out somehow that the ToU/EULA are actually valid and applicable.
All of this combined this looks like willful delaying tactics to drive a smaller opponent to run out of funds before they can complete litigation. It seems likely that IGE wants 20 days, then after some more filings (and possibly additional delays) will return to the stay/dismiss motion, and we'll be back where we started. We wonder what the judge will think.
[via Virtually Blind]
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