1. If approved by the Court, this class action settlement with John Deere will be a catastrophe for farmers and for the broader right-to-repair movement.
It will sacrifice the legal rights of hundreds of thousands of farmers for a pittance in damages and a mandate for John Deere to provide repair materials that is riddled with loopholes and, I believe, will ultimately accomplish nothing.
For starters, let’s talk about the damages. The repair restrictions by John Deere have been estimated to cost farmers $4.2 billion per year. This lawsuit priginally sought damages suffered by farmers as a result of John Deere’s illegal conduct over the FIVE years before the date of suit. That’s an estimated $21 billion in damages. This settlement gets farmers just $99 million — before attorneys fees are taken out. You do the math.
But what makes this settlement truly abhorrent is that it purports to solve the right-to-repair problem, when in reality it gives John Deere MULTIPLE LOOPHOLES through which to keep infringing on farmers’ rights to repair their own equipment and profit from that infringement *at the exact same scale* it’s doing so right now. Let’s talk about it.
Here are just five of those loopholes.
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More Perfect Union
@MorePerfectUS
John Deere has to pay farmers $99 million to resolve a class action right-to-repair lawsuit.
The company will also provide farmers with access to repair materials for 10 years.