They should not allow settlements in cases like this. There should be a ruling and one that forces companies to not continue these bad practices.
Yes it works against the creation of precedent, but the court system is meant to provide a resolution of dispute between parties. The creation of precedent is a side effect of that process, not it’s primary goal.
Edit: And just to end on a note of positivity, the courts aren’t really the place to make changes like this anyhow, which is out of most people’s hands. Instead we can lobby our Congress people etc to make laws that can end these practices (which is where most of our consumer protections have come from).
For instance you buy a dishwasher that is faulty. There’s a class action settlement, but for you, the dishwasher ruined your apartment and the neighbors downstairs. You can opt out and sue directly even if there’s been a class settlement.
If you didn’t, then you can bring your own suit. But in order to bring a suit you’d have to show you’ve been harmed, so you’d have to have been a customer of one of these printers.
(Sorry couldn’t resist)
This case is exactly the same. Don't be fooled - despite HP's name on the printers, they're not HP's printers anymore - they sold them, and have no more claim to them than I.
Tangentially, and orthogonal to the issue of if settlements should be allowed, undisclosed settlements should be banned. The public has a right to know what terms are reached through the threat of and with the sanction of the legal system. Because in a democracy, the public is ultimately responsible for reforming or maintaining that system, and how can they do that when they don't know how it's being used?
The government could bring a civil suit as plantiff, (like the attorney general’s office) but the government would have to show its been harmed. Perhaps for instance through cost of printers used in government offices, or if some specific statute was violated.
Also regarding any settlement. If it’s class action it’s public. If it was from a private individual plantiff, then they have a right to privacy you can’t just ignore.
That's what happened here. Refusing to scan without ink is sabotage.
> If it was from a private individual plantiff, then they have a right to privacy you can’t just ignore.
And the public has a right to transparency in the legal system. The rights are in conflict, and given the obvious risks of a black-box legal system, the right to transparency should prevail.
>> Sabotaging people’s private property is a criminal act.
> That's what happened here. Refusing to scan without ink is sabotage.
Breaking into someone’s office and physically damaging their property as in your example is different than a machine that disables itself. The machine can’t commit criminal acts. If you’re arguing that the CEO of HP commited a criminal act, that’s a stretch, as I have no idea what criminal law you’d say he broke. On top of which criminal cases have a much higher burden of proof, so civil litigation is likely to provide a better outcome.
And anyway, again, the proper venue for this, is to create better consumer protection laws in the first place. The judicial system isn’t going to magically police companies. We as the people have to hold them accountable and that means voting, lobbying etc, just as is being done with right to repair bills. The judicial system can compensate for harm, which hopefully will happen here, but it’s only part of the solution.
I hear what you are saying, but a contract is only private while both parties agree that the other is not in breach. The minute you want to enforce a contract its contents are made fully public.
TBH, I don't think anyone who got a life-changing amount of money from a settlement would want to jeopardise that by breaching the NDA and forcing the other party to sue, making the contract open to public inspection.