Nintendo wins Switch Joy-Con drift class-action lawsuit
A class-action lawsuit for Switch Joy-Con drift has come to close, and the ruling comes in favor of Nintendo.
We had previously reported on the Sanchez et. al. v. Nintendo of America case about a year ago. Originally, it was ruled that two mothers in the case couldn’t proceed with a class action. However, the case continued, and it was ultimately about whether or not kids could sue. According to Axios, Switch comes with an End User License Agreement “which disallows lawsuits and forces aggrieved parties to go into arbitration, but the parents’ lawyers argued the kids were too young to be bound by it.”
This past November, a federal judge in California ruled in favor of Nintendo. A previous decision was upheld that the parents were the actual owners of the Switch systems even though their children had received them as gifts. Because of this, the kids couldn’t sue over their consoles breaking.
Meanwhile, there are still two other cases Nintendo has been dealing with over Joy-Con drift, an issue in which the left joystick does not function properly. However, they’ve been on hold since early 2020 and 2021. Clients from those suits, as well as over 40 others, are going through arbitration.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa apologized for issues consumers had encountered with their Switch Joy-Con in 2020. In an interview published October 2021, Nintendo deputy general manager Toru Yamashita said the company has been “continuing to make improvements that may not always be visible” and is “still working on improvements.” He added that Nintendo has “investigated the Joy-Con controllers used by the customers and repeatedly improved the wear resistance and durability.”
Those that are interested in can read the full case filing here.
Thanks to Jake for the tip.
