Judge denies Microsoft request

Judge denies Microsoft request

	Published : Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:45 By : Agencies Print this Story

DES MOINES, Iowa (AFX) - A judge has rejected Microsoft attorneys' request to question named plaintiffs about their friendship with a Des Moines lawyer who is arguing the case.

Judge Scott Rosenberg ruled Friday that Microsoft attorneys could not ask the named plaintiffs about their relationship with attorney Roxanne Conlin. The company's lawyers wanted to question the plaintiffs, arguing that Conlin had referred to them during jury selection as 'just regular people who bought software' and who volunteered to step forward to sue Microsoft.

The lawsuit was brought by Joe Comes, a Des Moines businessman who owns a chain of pizza restaurants, and Patricia Anne Larsen, a retiree from northwest Iowa, and two business -- Riley Paint Inc. of Burlington and Skeffington's Formal Wear of Iowa Inc. of Des Moines.

Microsoft attorney David Tulchin said Larsen has been a friend of Conlin's since 1982, when Larsen held fundraisers for Conlin's failed run for governor. In 1999, Conlin represented Larsen in an employment discrimination case against Larsen's former employer, Eaton Corp.

Tulchin said Comes has been Conlin's son's best friend since high school.

Microsoft attorneys claimed Conlin recruited these friends to act as plaintiffs in the case so she could sue the company and that her comments during jury selection opened the door for Microsoft to challenge the plaintiffs' motivation in filing the lawsuit.

'They are not volunteers. They are not regular people, and it's not the people who brought the lawsuit. It's Ms. Conlin's son's best friend and a good friend of hers for 25 years,' Tulchin argued to Rosenberg outside the presence of the jury on Thursday.

Although Tulchin claimed that Conlin and her co-counsel, Richard Hagstrom of Minneapolis, have the most to gain in the lawsuit, he told the judge that wasn't the point Microsoft attorneys wanted to raise to the jury.

'All we are asking for is the right on cross-examination to extract from the individual plaintiffs the truthful statements ... about their relationship to Ms. Conlin,' he said.

Conlin said Microsoft wants the jury to believe that class-action lawsuits are attorney-driven cases brought for money when in reality they are a way for individuals with small claims to come together to take on large, powerful companies.

'Businesses like Microsoft have poisoned the public view of these forms for seeking redress by spending billions of dollars to spread propaganda. Now they seek to collect on their investment by improperly suggesting to the jury that the plaintiffs are not real plaintiffs,' she said. 'It is not relevant and it is so highly prejudicial to the plaintiffs, not because the plaintiffs did anything wrong, but because through the media and other mechanisms, Microsoft and other corporate miscreants have spread propaganda that class-action lawsuits are improper.'

Rosenburg's Friday ruling concluded that 'the door was not opened to such evidence...'

Hagstrom and Conlin worked on a similar lawsuit filed against Microsoft on behalf of Minnesota consumers in 2004, which sought more than $300 million from the company. During trial, the case settled for $174.5 million. Lawyers fees were about $59.4 million, according to court documents. The six plaintiffs who brought the case forward received $5,000 each.