While waiting to learn if the U.S. Supreme Court will hear its appeal in the Department of Justice (DoJ) antitrust case, Microsoft has received bad news on other legal fronts.

• A California judge will allow a set of private antitrust suits against Microsoft to proceed as a class action. This is the first, but possibly not the last, state-level antitrust suit to capitalize on the DoJ case and survive early legal tests. The California plaintiffs claim that Microsoft's anticompetitive practices artificially raised prices for all Californians who purchased MS-DOS, Windows, Word, and Excel in California since May 1994. Citing the Nov. 1999 Findings of Fact in the DoJ case, Judge Stuart Pollak of the California Superior Court said the plaintiffs had raised claims that could legally proceed to trial. The plaintiffs still face what the judge called the "formidable, but not impossible" task of proving that Microsoft's conduct harmed the class of consumers. In California and a minority of other U.S. states, consumers can sue for anticompetitive practices even if they didn't buy a product directly from the defendant, but they must show that resellers passed on measurably higher costs. Microsoft's information page for the case (which links to the ruling) is www.microsoft.com/presspass/legal/ca.

• A judge has awarded Bristol Technologies US$1 million in damages for deceptive trade practices. The ruling signals the return of a small but embarrassing antitrust-related case that Microsoft seemed to have won. Bristol makes developer tools for porting applications between Windows and Unix. It filed its lawsuit in Aug. 1998, charging that Microsoft’s policies on access to its Windows NT source code constitute an abuse of monopoly power and a violation of Connecticut laws governing deceptive and unfair trade practices. An eight-member jury concluded that Microsoft had not violated antitrust laws and awarded only one dollar in damages for deceptive trade practices. U.S. District Judge Janet Hall has now raised that award to US$1 million, saying "the deceptive conduct engaged in by Microsoft clearly rises to the level of reckless and wanton indifference to the harm it caused Bristol and others." Judge Hall also has not certified the jury verdict on the antitrust claims, leaving open the possibility she will overturn all or part of them. A copy of the judge's 103-page ruling is available at www.bristol.com/press/ruling1_0831/.

• A former Microsoft Australia employee has won US$9 million in back pay. The judgment stems from the May 1998 firing of Michael Canizales, who had been working at ninemsn.com, a joint venture between Microsoft and the Australian firm Publishing and Broadcasting Limited. Canizales claimed Microsoft fired him without proper notice and denied him an opportunity to exercise his stock options despite earlier promises. In granting the judgment, Justice Russell Peterson of the Industrial Relations Commission of New South Wales noted it involved a "ridiculously large sum for work done" that was nevertheless justified under Australian law. Microsoft can appeal the judgment to the full bench of the Commission's justices. The text of the judgment is at www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/nsw/NSWIRComm/2000/118.html.