US Judge Dismisses Switch Joy-Con Drift Lawsuit
Posted on February 06 2023 by Rod Lloyd
A federal judge in California has dismissed a lawsuit brought forth by two Nintendo Switch owners against the company for its Joy-Con drift issues. The ruling comes in favor of Nintendo, agreeing with the company’s arguments that console owners agreed to an End User License Agreement (EULA) “which disallows lawsuits and forces aggrieved parties to go into arbitration.”
The lawsuit, Sanchez et. al. v. Nintendo of America, was originally filed in October 2020, with two minor Switch users and their parents listed as plaintiffs. Following the court’s decision to send the case to arbitration, as compelled by the EULA, the parents withdrew as plaintiffs, leaving only the two minors as plaintiffs. The parents’ lawyers argued that the children were “too young to be bound by [the EULA].”
The judge ultimately ruled in Nintendo’s favor, agreeing with the company’s arguments that the parents, not their children, were the “de facto owners” of the Nintendo Switch consoles. The case was therefore dismissed.
You can read the full case filing right here.
Nintendo is still involved in at least two other Joy-Con drift lawsuits, the clients of which — as well as others — are currently going through arbitration.
In response to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019, Nintendo issued the following statement regarding Joy-Con drift:
“We take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them. We are aware of recent reports that some Joy-Con controllers are not responding correctly. We want our consumers to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we always encourage them to visit http://support.nintendo.com so we can help”.
What are your thoughts on these developments? Have you encountered Joy-Con drift? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Axios (via Nintendo Everything, Eurogamer, My Nintendo News)
Rod Lloyd is the Editor-In-Chief at Zelda Dungeon, overseeing the news and feature content for the site. Rod is considered the veteran of the writing team, having started writing for Zelda Informer in 2014 as a Junior Editor. After ZD and ZI officially merged in 2017, he stepped into the Managing Editor role and has helped steer the ship ever since. He stepped up to lead the writing team as Editor-In-Chief in 2023.
You can reach Rod at: rod.lloyd@zeldadungeon.net
