Law firm selected and participation list planned

It has now been about two and a half months since the previous announcement in which we finally had access to the funds, where considerable progress has been made and I can finally send out this update to keep you up to date on what’s going on behind the scenes.

The search for legal representation

As soon as the funds were available in the account, I begun contacting every single law firm / lawyer that specialized within the fields of law relevant to our case within Swedish jurisdiction to search for who could represent us in the class action lawsuit.

The process of knowing who to contact had thankfully been facilitated by the fact I’d already previously compiled a list of every potential candidate, where I then spent a bit over a month actually getting responses, having the calls & meetings to then choose the most suitable candidate.

This was one of the most important steps as I wanted to make sure to talk to basically everyone that could represent us where the goal was to determine who would represent us appropriately depending on how they answered, knowledge in the field, work & case history and so on.

After the search and narrowing it down to two law firms, the firm that I believe to be the best suited for this case has been determined, where I’ve been working alongside them for over a month to properly define the legal grounds for the case, what our chances are, what can reasonably be expected, limitations and so on.

Truth be told, this case isn’t as simple as one would think. It’s such an intertwined shitshow of different violations that have the same origin albeit different effects, leading to loads of ways it can be approached from a legal perspective, each with its own set of requirements, expected outcomes and limitations. But after a long time and over 46 lengthy back and fourth emails, we are now nearing the “end” of the necessary preparations to file the class action lawsuit.

The participation list

Given that this case is complex in terms of the ways that it can be approached and the damages that have been caused, we have lots of options for how we can proceed to achieve our desired objectives.

We need to know who is willing to participate and how they were affected by Mojang so that we can segment that list it into groups and see what our options are for moving the case forward.

An easy way to explain this is, imagine you have process A and B; both of them would lead to the outcome we are looking for, but the requirement to actually “attack” with either of those groups is different, where A requires the group of participants to fulfill a very specific set of circumstances, and B has a completely different set of circumstances.

This is the situation we basically find ourselves in, we know what the processes are, we know what the estimated outcome can be for each one, but we don’t know how many participants there are or how many fulfill the specific conditions for each process. We need to know this information so that we can then go for the process with the highest likelihood of winning, where we have the largest group of people that fulfill the necessary condition for said process.

The update / follow up video

Since we need the list of people that are willing to participate in order to proceed, it was determined by the law firm & I that the best step we can take now is to produce a follow up video to the first one, where its goal is to have people fill in a form to show their willingness to participate in the class action lawsuit against Mojang.

In short, the video will introduce the law firm and lawyers that will handle the case (in-person meeting on camera), updates on what’s been happening since the last video, new information that surfaced, what our chances are, what can be expected, how the proceeding works and so on.

The production of said video is currently underway, it is having changes being done here and there at the law firm’s request to make sure that what is said / shown is correct and won’t cause any issues.

I don’t quite have a direct estimate of when it will release given that I’m already speed running it beyond the speed at which I usually do things, but once we finish holding a meeting with the “chief” of Swedens consumer protection agency (which we can hopefully get an appointment for within the next two weeks), I can probably have it all edited and ready for release within three weeks ish (of that meeting happening).

Given that these talks with the firm have led to a deeper understanding of where we stand in relation to the law in Sweden (such as how the European directives were implemented in Swedish law), I would say with a high degree of confidence that our chances are looking better than I initially anticipated, all because of a topic I wasn’t even planning on addressing in the first place: the account migration. This will all be explained in greater detail within the video itself.

Timeline

Here’s the current timeline of what’s left until filing:

• Finish solidifying the claims and their legal grounds.
• Have a meeting with the chief of Sweden’s consumer protection agency (konsumentombudsmannen) to see how we can collaborate with them as it opens up a few possibilities (in terms of fines that have to be issued by the government for instance).
• Finish the production of the follow up video and release it.
• Collect the participation list.
• Segment that list and figure out what process we should go for.
• Finish the filings.
• Have a direct talk with Mojang’s lawyers to fulfill legal obligations of “trying to resolve it with the other party prior to trying anything in court”, something which I’m not expecting will result in anything given how Mojang has acted historically and that they likely won’t meet our demands or refuse to talk to us.
• File the class action lawsuit.

The funds

As of this point in time, we have yet to use any of the funds we have available, meaning that it’s all still fully present in the bank account ready for use. The law firm that has been working on this mentioned that (paraphrased from Swedish) “We are not driven by the desire to invoice, we first want to make sure the case is fully solidified where we can then ensure that we add value.”.

This does strike me as odd given how much work I can see they’ve already put into it, it’s a very stark contrast to some of the firms that wanted to immediately invoice after receiving the first email asking if they’re available; and while I can speculate on why we’re being treated this nicely (such as the case being rather unique / interesting, the high publicity aspect of it, the lawyer’s own children being affected by this, its origins etc), I fully stand by the the choice as they’ve shown in the meetings and responses that they’re knowledgeable in the field and know what our options are (in contrast to some firms where I had to explain what a perpetual license is).

The update video in which they agreed to be on camera answering questions about their take on the case, how things work etc will be a good opportunity to introduce who they are, their decades of work experience in the field and so on.

Questions

I’m going to have a meeting with them at their office within a week or so, where I would like to use that meeting to ask important questions that I may not have considered or even thought of.

If you have a legal question directly related to what we’re doing (so like like a question about some statue of limitations, participation etc), if it’s something that I haven’t asked yet / feels like something we should have an answer to, I’ll mention it and have it answered.

A channel has been created under the Serious category legal-questions for you to submit the questions which I’ll then sort through.

Final note

We’re steadily moving along, I haven’t been pushing out “frequent small updates” because I’m becoming increasingly aware of how I have to be careful with what is being pushed out, where I want to avoid saying or mentioning anything that could be problematic / subject to change prior to having it be approved by the lawyers.

I’ll send out another update once we’ve held the meeting at their office, had the meeting with the chief of the consumer protection agency & as the production process is moving along.