A U.S. law firm is investigating the potential of a class action lawsuit based on reports of joystick drift issues in Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers. The law firm, Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP, is seeking information from players who own Joy-Cons with drift issues to see if there is grounds for a Joy-Con drift lawsuit.
CSK&D posted a contact page for the investigation, asking Joy-Con owners for information about when they purchased their Switch (and additional Joy-Cons, if applicable), when the joystick drift problem began, whether or not the Joy-Con owner has contacted Nintendo, and, if so, how Nintendo responded. The firm appears to know the Joy-Con drift investigation could attract quite the amount of attention, as the site’s main page contains a message directing visitors interested in that case to the aforementioned contact page, but not to that of any other CSK&D investigations. CSK&D specializes in cases against corporations, such as antitrust and consumer protection class action lawsuits.
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According to the CSK&D website, the latter usually involves a company “selling products or services that do not live up to the company’s advertising claims, or overcharging consumers for goods or services.” The three attorneys listed for Joy-Con drift lawsuit investigation — Benjamin F. Johns, Andrew W. Ferich, and Alex M. Kashbura — all include defective products and consumer fraud among their areas of practice.
Joy-Con drift has been a major issue for many Switch users for some time now. The CSK&D investigation comes following a recent post by Reddit user u/LocusAintBad earlier this week that gained 27,600 upvotes, garnering media attention and thousands of replies. Searching “Joy-Con drift” on Twitter yields many videos of what players claim is Joy-Con drift screwing up their gameplay.
Joy-Con drift makes this damn near unplayable. Fix your junk, Nintendo. #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/axFnk4q1L4
— Wyburn (@wyburnthefox) July 19, 2019
Joy-Con drift = Link doing the floss #BotW #BreathoftheWild #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/T04x89ZNgh
— Waylon (@Gaamere) May 25, 2019
Joy-con drift is the Dark Souls of manufacturing issues #DarkSouls #DarkSoulsRemastered #NintendoSwitch fuuuuuuu pic.twitter.com/MGU9ZjaiBd
— nerf chris (@LostInSedation) November 27, 2018
According to u/LocusAintBad, getting Nintendo to repair your Joy-Cons via the company’s support page requires a $4 fee and about two weeks of waiting. And even that may only apply to those whose Switch is still under warranty, as Kotaku notes that early Switch adopters may find “repairs that would typically only incur a relatively small shipping charge now cost upwards of $40.” u/LocusAintBad and other Joy-Con users find sending in Joy-Cons for repair and buying a self-repair kit — an oft-cited possible fix — to be poor solutions to the problem, instead preferring Nintendo to do something about it for consumers en-masse. Perhaps the potential CSK&D Joy-Con lawsuit could give fans the reparation they feel they deserve.
