So you handled all the killing and thuggery in GTA San Andreas but found yourself traumatized by the hidden, pixelated sex?

Don't spend your Hot Coffee lawsuit settlement money just yet.

The New York Times reports that the Hot Coffee class-action lawsuit, which was nearing settlement, has been tossed by a federal judge:

...Judge Shirley Wohl Kram wrote that purchasers of the game could not be lumped together in a class action. The claims of members of the proposed class would be affected by the law in each purchaser’s home state, Judge Kram wrote, and therefore could not be resolved in a single proceeding in federal court in New York.

 

“Accordingly, the court decertifies the settlement class on the grounds that common issues do not predominate over individualized issues,” the judge wrote.

 

The judge’s latest decision undermines a settlement agreement reached between lawyers for purchasers of the game who contended they were offended by the hidden scenes, on the one hand, and lawyers for the game’s makers, Take-Two Interactive Software and Rockstar Games.

The NY Times notes that less than 3,000 GTA San Andreas buyers had applied to join the lawsuit. The paper had previously questioned the size of the plaintiffs' legal fees in the case. Meanwhile, attorney Ted Frank of Overlawyered writes:

Take Two spent millions negotiating and administering a settlement because the court refused to rule on its decertification motion last year; that wasted effort demonstrates why it is important for courts to resolve certification questions early in the case. But with no certified class, there can be no class settlement...

Frank, who joined the class and filed objections to the proposed settlement, wonders whether there will be an appeal.

The judge's ruling may be found here...

The New York Times takes a look at the controversy surrounding legal fees sought by attorneys in the Hot Coffee class-action suit.

Seth Lesser, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, told the NYT he was disappointed that only 2,676 buyers of GTA San Andreas filed claims:

Am I disappointed? Sure. We can’t guess as to why now, several years later, people care or don’t care. The merits of the case were clear... The game was sold as something that it wasn’t.

As previously reported by GamePolitics (see: Did Lawyers Inflate Fees in Hot Coffee Class-action Suit?), Lesser and his legal colleagues are seeking $1.3 in fees. Meanwhile, defense attorneys for GTA publisher Take-Two say it only cost them $30,000 to defend the case.

University of Kentucky law prof Mary Davis told the Times:

It doesn’t typically go that way. [To have legal fees far exceed what plaintiffs receive] is sort of backwards.

Ted Frank, an attorney who also writes for the Overlawyered blog, commented:

There are two possibilities. Possibility one is they have a meritorious lawsuit and they’re selling out the class for attorneys’ fees. The other possibility is that, and frankly I think this is the more likely possibility, they brought a meritless lawsuit that had no business being brought to court at all.

The Times also ponders why GTA's non-stop violence is seemingly more acceptable than the Hot Coffee sex animations. Here the newspaper turns to Craig Anderson, an Iowa State prof whose research on game violence and aggression is accepted in some quarters, disputed in others:

For some reason sex is seen as more harmful to kids than violence. The irony is that in terms of the research literature on harmful effects of various forms of media, television, movies, video games, the research is very, very clear. There are significant short-term and long-term effects of violent content.

A hearing on the proposed settlement is scheduled in U.S. District Court in Manhattan today.

UPDATE: Overlawyered's Ted Frank posts his impressions of the June 25th hearing...

 If you think that the political fallout from Hot Coffee is fading, think again.

The GTA San Andreas scandal not only continues to be a public relations thorn in the side of the video game industry - it's also an inviting target for politicians.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is no stranger to the Hot Coffee affair. In July, 2005, just as the publicity over the incident was peaking, Upton proposed a resolution in Congress ordering the Federal Trade Commission to look into Hot Coffee. The motion passed 355-21, leading to the FTC's June, 2006 report on the scandal.

Upton, however, was not pleased with the FTC's findings, saying:

"I guess I thought the FTC would have had some more teeth than they apparently have... I'm not at all happy... In essence there are no consequences. None... I would like to have thought that (Take-Two and Rockstar) would have been able to be fined for millions of dollars for the trash they put out across this country."

GamePolitics has run a number of stories over the past 15 months tracking the steady decline of Take-Two's stock price in the wake of the Hot Coffee. TTWO had a pre-scandal near 28, but has been as low as 9 in recent times.

Business site MarketWatch, however, reports that TTWO is rebounding, despite new concerns about ongoing investigations by the SEC and the Manhattan District Attorney's office. There are also a number of shareholder suits pending as well as the controversy surrounding the October 17th release of Bully.

With the stock price now in the mid-teens, MarketWatch cites the strength of the Grand Theft Auto franchise as a factor in TTWO's rally.

"We view it as a company that has had some problems. But, (Take-Two) has been disproportionately punished," said Emmanuel Ferreira of the Oppenheimer Quest Opportunity Value Fund. Ferreira told MarketWatch Take-Two has no debt, possesses a talented development team and has high liquidity.