600 million? Enough to keep PS3 from happening?

[Bobtheduck]

A pastor, who's police officer brother was killed by someone apparently inspired by "Grand Theft Auto", is sueing NOT ONLY ROCKSTAR, but Rockstar, their parent company, Sony, Walmart, and gamestop... The Suit totals 600 million...! I don't know how the suit is going to be divvied out, but they'll likely attack the ones with the largest pocketbooks... That's the way lawsuits work in these cases (My Dad received the worst of a "wrongfull death" suit against everyone involved in a major accident, despite there being no proof he was at any fault, simply because the woman who was asleep at the wheel that caused the wreck didn't have any insurance and my Dad did...) so Walmart and Sony will likely be splitting the majority of the cost of this... Man... The supreme court denied the case being dropped...

Of course, GTA is the easy target for these things... GTA is the "Scumbag wife beater" of video games... Morally reprehensable? Yes. A bit BASE? Yes. The CAUSE of violent crime? no...

Oopps, forgot the link: http://www.gamespot.com/pages/news/story.php?sid=6146882&page=1

[Mega.EXE]

whoa

[Mr. SmartyPants]

There is 0 way that Sony, walmart, or gamestop is going to be sued. Possibly Rockstar. But No way Sony. That's just illogical! And why not Microsoft? Or did this guy play GTA on a Playstation 2?

That's just some horsemess right there

I found this pretty humorous

The same people saying video games influence kids are the same ones saying that video games make you fat and lazy, but if that were true then every kid who played Madden would spend a whole lotta time running around out doors playing football

Come to think of it... the Cayanne pepper I put in this curry burns my tongue. maybe I should sue the grocery store for selling me spices

[GrubbTheFragger]

oh boy another person sueing GTA. but y the crap would he try to sue Wal-mart ,Sony, and Gamespot. He must have gone out and first read a review at gamespot then, went to wal-mart bought the game put it in his sony ps2 and then saw the rockstar logo. geez next thing you now he is gonna sue himself for playing the game and then sue his controller for letting him play and then sue his TV for letting hm see the game *rolls eyes*

[Locke]

oh boy another person sueing GTA. but y the crap would he try to sue Wal-mart ,Sony, and Gamespot. He must have gone out and first read a review at gamespot then, went to wal-mart bought the game put it in his sony ps2 and then saw the rockstar logo. geez next thing you now he is gonna sue himself for playing the game and then sue his controller for letting him play and then sue his TV for letting hm see the game *rolls eyes*

Thats a new one.

[Shao Feng-Li]

It's a blame the gun and not the user kinda thing eh? The gun being the game.... okay bad analogy, now that I think about it. XD

That guy is so gonnna lose.

[Bobtheduck]

I honestly don't care of Rockstar went under, but he's suing gamestop and walmart for sale of M rated materials when there is no law against that, and suing Sony for not policing the sales of games that they have licensed... That is honestly not their responsibility... And Going after gamestop and Walmart, but why stop there? Why not attack every retailer that has ever sold an M rated game to a minor? Target, Circuit City, Game Crazy, let's not forget rental places... Blockbuster, Hollywood, Warehouse... Oh, and Moore "admitted" to have "played" GTA??? Yeah??? So?! He didn't blame GTA for what he did, they just wanted to have some correlation... Geez, people are stupid...

Let's not forget that MS isn't' in the suit... That's because Walmart is a popular "evil" corporation in the eyes of people (MS is only evil to the hardcore computer geeks) and Sony is a foreign company that doesn't have the legal presence to fight this like MS would... MS would squash this suit flat... I wish they had gone after MS, this suit would have ended before you could say "frivolous"

[blkmage]

Well, the criminal trial involving Moore is over already and the jury decided that Moore was responsible for the killings, not the game.

In the civil suit though, I think Sony and others are much more concerned about the impact that a ruling against them would have rather than the $600 million.

[Bobtheduck]

Hmm... That 17 mil (wat it?) suit by the hardware development people that made the off center gyro thing was a threat enough... 600 million is a LOT of money... That's like the development cost 30 of the most expensive games ever made... That's more than the cost of some major blockbusters in recent times... Any way you look at it, over half a billion dollars is a BIG chunk... Well, maybe not for WalMart, but for Sony it would be... If it comes straight out of the playstation division, anyhow...

[Lynx]

i doubt sony will actually have to pay anything, since they'd somehow have to prove that sony somehow had a part on the killing, and that's a big stretch.

i also dont think people should blame their problems on video games. take some responsability for your actions people!

[Shao Feng-Li]

i also dont think people should blame their problems on video games. take some responsability for your actions people!

Amen to that.

[MPX42]

Ok,I can understand why the guy decided to sue Rockstar,maybe even Sony,BUT WAL-MART AND GAMESTOP?That's a little too far.

[Nate]

Bob brings up an interesting point, the Grand Theft Auto games are available on Xbox as well, but Microsoft is not involved in the suit. Yeah, it's likely that Bob's hypothesis is correct and he just simply isn't involving Microsoft because he knows MS's lawyers would tear him apart.

I also fail to see how you can be sued for doing something that is perfectly legal...

[Stephen]

Yes. Sue Sony because of a game thats on PC as well as Xbox. Way to make a bunch of money, and do absolutly nothing.

[Arnobius]

Well, if the juries are dumb enough to make cigarette smokers rich when for the past 30 years, the packs have had surgeon general warnings that said said "THESE THINGS WILL KILL YOU, MORON!" on them, they'll probably be happy to give money to these people too

[Yojimbo]

Sony has better lawyers than Microsoft bar none. This suit is three years old and it never would have even got close to them winning anyway.

[Kaligraphic]

Hmm... *fantasizes*

dude: I'm'a sue that Sony for 600 mil and make my mark on things.
Sony: Dude, we're a japanese company. If you sue us, a couple of yakuza types will come by and collect your head.
dude: Um, never mind.

[Neko Niisan]

*Walks in after weekend*
*Read entire thread start to finish*
*Roll eyes and leaves again muttering...*
"Oh, not again..."



This type of lawsuit has been round the block more times than your average postal van. When will people learn that unless you can tangiably make a direct link to the defence, the suit is void.

[Yojimbo]

The problem with Strickland's case first off was that he tried to make the point that videogames could actually teach someone to kill. Madden can't teach me to throw a perfect spiral to a wide receiver 80 yards away. Grand Theft Auto can't teach me to fire a rifle 480 yards accurately.

[Technomancer]

A pastor, who's police officer brother was killed by someone apparently inspired by "Grand Theft Auto", is sueing NOT ONLY ROCKSTAR, but Rockstar, their parent company, Sony, Walmart, and gamestop... The Suit totals 600 million...! I don't know how the suit is going to be divvied out, but they'll likely attack the ones with the largest pocketbooks

This really isn't that different than parents suing record companies because their kid listened to heavy metal and did something bad. Those kind of cases never really went anywhere, and I don't expect this one to either.

[Destroyer2000]

I always avoid reading this sociopathical crap from people. Videogames don't make people violent, morons. If your kids are influenced by them, DON'T LET THEM PLAY THEM THEN. IF THE STUPID SOCCER MOMS WOULD KEEP M RATED GAMES AWAY FROM THEIR KIDS THEN IT WOULDN'T HAPPEN. THERE IS A 17 AND UP AGE LIMIT FOR A REASON! This is the reason why I know alot of people who hate humanity...argh, this makes me so mad. Pathetic idiots. Now he's going to get a bad name put upon Christians as being illogical, impulsive morons simply because he is stupid...

EDIT: BTW, This guy doesn't care; he's just money hungry. That's the reason the suit is for so much; money won't bring the dead back. Doesn't the Bible say you are not supposed to sue anyone?

[GrubbTheFragger]

wow Detroyer a wee bit hostile there not that i don't agree for the most part but sometimes they just don't get it.

[gungrave]

Ok...there IS a line..... and that person(killer) Was prolly a psyco....that just happened to play gta I say thats stupid...why would you sue everyone for carrying the game? he is a pastor... I thinnk he needs to pray about his sueing...

[Destroyer2000]

Yeah, I know. Jack Thompson got worse than that in my opinions of him.

[Nate]

Doesn't the Bible say you are not supposed to sue anyone?

It doesn't say you're not supposed to sue ANYONE. It says that you shouldn't bring lawsuits against other Christians though. I think that suing is probably the wrong way to settle things, since it's pretty much about the money, and Christians shouldn't be overly greedy. But if you have a family member directly injured by someone else and that person refuses to pay the hospital bills, then a lawsuit is probably your best option...as long as you pretty much sued for the amount of the bills and little else.

[Bobtheduck]

This really isn't that different than parents suing record companies because their kid listened to heavy metal and did something bad. Those kind of cases never really went anywhere, and I don't expect this one to either.

2 words... (and, no, I'm not referring to another "rockstar" lawsuit, so don't have GTA on your mind when I say this) Hot Coffee...

Yeah... I'm referring, I hope you realize, to the McDonald's suit... The woman that sued McDonald's because they didn't warn her the coffee was hot enough to burn her leg... It may not have worked before, but with the recent cigarrette lawsuits and fast food lawsuits, that is iconic of the stupidity of the legal system in the US... [button="PM worthy discussion"]That and judicial review... how did it start? With a Judicial review, of course! PM me if you want to discuss the supreme court and my opinions on it as a whole, as it is almost certainly classified as political debate though it involves both sides of the fence as well as those weird fences that sorta sit in space...[/button]

[DragonSlayer]

Yea it is a big stretch but. a while back here there were some accidents on the highway. a few people were coming back from street racing in portland, and one of them(WHo just got their liscence) Got stupid and decided to race in the left lane along side one of their friends. they collided with a van and died. Now their friend who they were racing was convicted with murder because they ruled that they had encouraged them to race, and had influenced them by being at the street races in the first place. so they had nothing to do with it really, but no one of then is serving 9 years in prison because they wanted somone to blame, Thats a huge stretch, In all things being "Reasonable" Thats in comparison the same as saying GTA is responsable for the killing.

[Arnobius]

This really isn't that different than parents suing record companies because their kid listened to heavy metal and did something bad. Those kind of cases never really went anywhere, and I don't expect this one to either.

The Ozzy Ozbourne "Suicide Solution" case? That one was settled out of court.

[Sweet Mercury]

But if you have a family member directly injured by someone else and that person refuses to pay the hospital bills, then a lawsuit is probably your best option...as long as you pretty much sued for the amount of the bills and little else.

I think a better consideration for a law suit might be "what financial damage have I inccured as a direct/indirect result of this accident?" Obviously, medical bills should be covered by the party responsible, but what if the lost wages on the part of the injured result in a loss of home? What if there is a lifetime of expensive therepy/medication? The issue becomes difficult to quantify, and especially muddied when greed becomes a factor.

On topic: such lawsuits are indicitive of a culture that needs two things: a reason to absolve themselves of responsibility at all costs, and a scape goat on which to blame all their woes. In this case, the person responsible for the murder of the police officer was the person who commited the murder. There are unsavory things in our culture: guns, drugs, violent video games, but we cannot forget that each individual is, in the end, solely responsible for their own actions. Blaming others never turned back the clock.

[Kaligraphic]

Blaming others nevere turned back the clock.

You could try suing the U.S. govt over DST...