Audiophile Music Direct and Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL) have officially settled a class-action complaint centering on the latter’s mastering process. Photo Credit: Jace & Afsoon
The court has signed off on a settlement agreement as part of a class-action lawsuit centering on Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s unadvertised incorporation of digital mastering.
The court just recently granted the final approval of the settlement and dismissed the complaint (which had named MFSL as well as its Audiophile Music Direct parent, the operator of the namesake Music Direct) with prejudice. The signed decision by the US District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle was shared with Digital Music News earlier this morning.
About MFSL’s “Ultradisc One Step” and “Original Master Recording” descriptors and the complaints made by certain customers who had filed the lawsuit – these common arguments were used in the cases against MFSL. In the interest of relative brevity, the plaintiffs maintained that they’d paid a premium for MFSL products because the records were meant to have been created via an all-analog process.
However, it was revealed that Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab had been incorporating digital into its mastering process. This led to legal action by several customers who had bought these products – despite apologies and media initiatives from MFSL.
Though the audiophiles’ arguments revolved around the same main points, the parties were less united in their position as to how the matter should be resolved.
In May of this year, the presiding judge granted a motion for preliminary approval of a settlement for the complaint that Tuttle and Collman had submitted.
However, multiple individuals behind similar suits in different venues had formally opposed the estimated $25 million settlement including $10,000 apiece for the two plaintiffs, as much as $290,000 in attorneys’ fees, and a combination of refunds and coupons for class members. NPotwithstanding these qualms, the settlement has been finalized.
Different legal documents show that related cases, which will presumably be shelved now that a nationwide settlement’s come to fruition, had been stayed pending the settlement outcome.
On the 5th, the court overseeing another suit, filed in Illinois by an individual named Adam Stiles, set a late-January deadline for the “next status report on the Tuttle litigation,” per a docket entry. This judge is also overseeing a complaint against Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab from one Gregory Bitterman and established an identical status-report cutoff.
Lastly, a California federal judge in late February stayed a different suit yet, from a plaintiff called Thomas Molinari, pending a determination on the settlement that just wrapped.
