Montreal consumer Olivier Dumoulin started a class-action lawsuit against Dell, arguing that the company wouldn't honour Axim sales made on its Canadian website, before the erroneous prices of $89 and $118 were rectified. The real prices were $379 and $549 respectively.

At issue for the Supreme Court is a caveat used by Dell and a growing number of retailers on the sale of everything from computers to cellphones.

It's a clause that obliges dissatisfied customers to challenge companies through arbitration - and not class-action lawsuits.

"This clause for us is abusive. Its goal is to block class-action lawsuits," said Charles Tanguay, a spokesperson for Quebec's Union des consommateurs, which is spearheading the case with Dumoulin. "What we're defending here is a principle. When a price is advertised, it must be sold at that price."

In 2004, the Quebec Superior Court granted the union and Dumoulin class-action certification.

Each member of the class is asking for Dell to supply the Axim at the transaction price, plus compensatory damages of $100 and punitive damages of $1,000, court papers show.

A lawyer for Dell couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.

Dell's appeal of the Superior Court's decision has broad implications for most Canadian provinces. While such arbitration clauses are no longer permitted in Quebec - their use is also forbidden in Ontario - Friday's decision would set the standard for retailers in other provinces, legal experts say.

"There's a big trend of retailers favouring arbitration clauses," said Frederic Bachand, a McGill University law professor.

Bachand was part of a team of lawyers representing a neutral intervenor in the Dell case.

While the trend is more limited in Canada, Bachand estimates that these clauses are used in more than half of U.S. consumer contracts - or purchases of goods and services.

Arbitration is advantageous for big business because it's done privately - sparing companies potentially negative publicity - and usually less costly, he said.

Some arbitration clauses also force customers to challenge a company as individuals, which could dissuade customers from taking action because of fees.

"What the big-business side is trying to do is to force the consumer to go to individual arbitration," he said. "We've seen some cases that are obviously abusive, where companies are trying to shift the cost (of arbitration) to the consumer."

Dell wasn't trying to gouge customers on fees, Bachand said.

Along with the Dell case, the Supreme Court is also expected to decide on a similar lawsuit involving Rogers Wireless.

A Quebec customer trying to launch a class-action lawsuit against Rogers for high mobile fees was also told he had to go to arbitration instead of court.

Duane Morris said Thursday it has officially opened law offices in Vietnam's two principal cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

The expansion plans were originally revealed as the Philadelphia-based law firm announced the opening of a Singapore office in late December.

As with Singapore, the Vietnam effort will be led by Duane Morris partner and former Mexican Ambassador to Singapore Eduardo Ramos-Gómez.

The Vietnam offices will be staffed with three lawyers and focus on the areas of corporate finance, project finance, energy, cross-border transactions, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, real estate and telecommunications. The firm's Asia-based lawyers service clients in, or with interests in, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. The office and staff are fluent in the major languages of those countries.

Sheldon Bonovitz, chairman of Duane Morris, said Vietnam has thriving manufacturing, information technology and high-tech industries and a heavy investment concentration from Singapore and other countries in Asia, as well as from the United States. In addition, Bonovitz said Vietnam's accession to membership in the World Trade Organization in January promises further economic development in the future.

http://www.duanemorris.com

In a March ruling, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board said Webcasters raised the current $.0012 fee Internet broadcasters must pay per stream to $.0008 for 2006, $.0011 for 2007, $.0014 for 2008, $.0018 for 2009 and $.0019 for 2010.

Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents large Internet radio stations including Yahoo, RealNetworks, Live365 and Pandora, said the court loss would force Webcasters "to make very difficult decisions about what music, if any, they are able to offer," according to the report.

Potter still holds out a possible compromise from SoundExchange, the organization collecting royalty fees. Two previous attempts, including capping the fees and freezing royalties at 1998 levels, failed.

Washington could also intervene and either set aside the Royalty Boar's ruling or cap total royalties at a percentage of their revenue.

"I don't think Congress ought to be running the war," Bush said. "They ought to be funding the troops."

He asked lawmakers to wait until September for a more telling analysis of progress.

The president said that he understood that "there's war fatigue in America" - even among some Republican lawmakers - but added that bringing troops home before they had achieved success would mean disaster. In what seemed to be another signal that he plans no sudden change on Iraq, Bush announced that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates would travel to the Middle East next month to reassure U.S. allies of American support.

The progress report arrived on Capitol Hill as the Senate and House were conducting separate debates on the war. While the president renewed his threat to veto any legislation calling for a timetable for troop withdrawal, the Democratic majority worked to build support for such proposals.

"Today's report from the president confirms what many had suspected - the war in Iraq is headed in a dangerous direction," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. "The Iraqi government has not met the key political benchmarks it has set for itself and Iraqi security forces continue to lag well behind expectations."

He added: "We must change course now, not in September."

And Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a Democratic presidential hopeful, said, "Don't tell us we're making progress in Iraq when the last three months have been some of the deadliest since this war began."

The document, reflecting input from top U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence officials, described a "complex and extremely challenging" security situation. It predicted "tough fighting" through the summer and accelerated attacks by anti-coalition fighters with the approach of September.

But the document also pointed toward "encouraging signs that should, over time, point the way to a more normalized and sustainable level of U.S. engagement in Iraq, with a decreasing number of U.S. combat forces increasingly focused on a core set of missions, such as those set out by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group."

In December, the Iraq Study Group called for a phased withdrawal of combat troops, a formulation supported by some Democrats in Congress. Bush said Thursday that he shared the study group's goal of moving toward "a more limited role in Iraq for the United States."

But he said it was wrong to suggest that his administration did not want to bring the troops home as soon as possible.

"If we increase our support at this crucial moment, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home," he said.

The legislation that required the two reports said that if the president could not certify progress on the benchmarks, he would have to propose changes in strategy or see war funding reduced.

The document asserts that satisfactory progress has been achieved on eight of the 18 benchmarks, predominantly in military areas. Movement on eight others was unsatisfactory, with political reconciliation lagging. Two other areas got mixed assessments.

But the report said that even when the political performance of the Iraqi government had been unsatisfactory, it was too early to make final judgments.

That approach allowed the administration to rebut recent claims by some in Congress that almost no progress had been made in Iraq since Bush changed course in January and sent 30,000 additional troops to Iraq.

The report insisted on the need for more time to see the results of the just-completed troop increase; progress on national reconciliation may require "a sustained period of reduced violence in order to build trust." Only half the 300 extra civilian teams dedicated to provincial reconstruction are in place, and the full complement will not be reached until December, the report says.

The administration report certified satisfactory progress on providing trained Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations; preventing Baghdad from becoming "a safe haven for any outlaws"; and protecting minority-part rights in the Iraqi legislature.

Progress was inadequate on making it easier for former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to obtain government jobs as a step toward reconciliation with Sunnis; disarming militia groups; buffering Iraqi commanders from "political intervention"; and passing oil and revenue-sharing legislation.

Another shortfall was in "increasing the number of Iraqi Security Forces units capable of operating independently." Progress had been "slow," and operations by those forces still required "the presence of coalition partners and support." Political reconciliation remained elusive, the document said.

Throughout Iraq, ethnic and sectarian division, violence, corruption and lack of basic services remained problematic. There were some signs of economic progress, however, including slightly lower unemployment and inflation rates.

A military bright spot, often cited by the administration, was the somewhat improved situation in Anbar Province.

The administration has worried that benchmarks could effectively provide the coalition's enemies with a recipe for frustrating its goals. Indeed, the report predicts that a resilient Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or AQI for its other name, Al Qaeda in Iraq, will "attempt to increase its tempo of attacks as September approaches - in an effort to influence U.S. domestic opinion about sustained U.S. engagement in Iraq."

The report reasserts an Iranian link to the violence, saying, "Iran continues to train, fund and equip extremist groups, both Shi'a and Sunni, that attack Iraqi and coalition forces."

The Syrian role is assessed harshly as well. The report says that an estimated 80 percent of suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners, most of whom have passed through Syria after flying from their home countries to Damascus. "This Syria-based network is able to supply some 50 to 80 suicide bombers to AQI per month," the analysis states.

But in one sign of progress, it says that suicide attacks involving vehicle-born explosives have declined in recent months from the all-time highs they hit in March and April, following "aggressive coalition and Iraqi operations into former AQI havens."

A central coalition goal has been to create conditions for the Iraqi government and officials to be able to work in relative peace to establish political normality. In Anbar, the report says, that is beginning to happen. "The provincial government - for the first time in a year - is now able to meet in the province," it says.

And fundamentally, the report finds that the Iraqi political establishment lacks both the culture and the will for rapid progress, partly because it depends on consensus building between competing groups. National reconciliation requires both leadership and, the report says, "expression of a common national political will, or 'vision,' that has so far been lacking."

Still, the report again found reason for hope. The national response to the June 13 bombing of a mosque in Samarra - which provoked fears of a cycle of reprisal violence - was relatively effective in muting such a reaction, the report states. "When necessary, the government of Iraq and major political figures can overcome the dynamics that otherwise inhibit effectiveness," it says.

The suit claims that the Xbox 360 was "negligently designed and manufactured" in that the video-game console's laser disc reading assembly contacts and scratches discs. "The scratches to the game discs render them unreadable or otherwise inoperable," the suit says. Brouwer said the Xbox 360 he bought in November 2006 destroyed the Gears of War and Madden NFL '0" video-game discs he bought for $50 each. Microsoft was not immediately available for comment.

The lawsuit was filed less than a week after Microsoft said it would set aside more than $1 billion to extend the warranty protection on the Xbox 360 to cover what the company called an "unacceptable" number of repairs to the consoles. The main problem was a defect that caused a general hardware failure. Microsoft said it would take a financial charge against pretax earnings of as much as $1.15 billion in the quarter ending June 30 to cover the cost of the extended warranty protection.

In his lawsuit, Brouwer claimed to have received thousands of complaints from U.S. Xbox users who have had game discs damaged. Microsoft has replaced some damaged disks at $20 each, provided the games were made by Microsoft, the suit said. "However, defendant has not replaced all of its titles that have been scratched and refused to replace or provide any compensation for any scratched game discs made by third-parties."

The suit alleges that the problem is not limited to the United States. A Dutch TV program, Kassa, received numerous complaints in February of disc-damaging Xbox consoles from customers in that country, the suit noted. Kassa investigated and later ran its own tests, which found that some Xbox 360s scratched game discs after five hours of playing.

Microsoft Netherlands, according to the suit, acknowledged that disc scratching was possible in some machines, and the company "would seek a solution for the Dutch customers with this problem."

The complaint also lists Microsoft's extended warranty plan as further proof of the Xbox's defective hardware. "At all times material to this complaint, the defendant had full knowledge that there are other numerous design defects with its Xbox 360 system and console, including the defective laser disc reading assembly," the complaint said.

In seeking damages, the suit alleges that Microsoft has breached its warranty to customers and is liable for damages caused by the consoles. The suit asks the court to order Microsoft to pay actual and consequential damages, including replacing damaged discs and repairing defective consoles. The Xbox costs as much a $479.

In December, the family of an Illinois infant who died in a house fire sued Microsoft, claiming the blaze was started by an Xbox that overheated.

A court of appeals had overruled the circuit court in December 2005, saying Tietsworth's case could be amended to include warranty and contract claims. The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the circuit court has no authority to reopen the amended case.

Harley-Davidson (nyse: HOG - news - people ) spokesman Bob Klein said the company would not comment until it had reviewed the decision. Tietsworth's lawyer, Ted Warshafsky, also declined to comment before reading the decision.

Harley-Davidson sent letters in January 2001 to Tietsworth and 140,000 other owners of 1999 and early 2000 models built with the Twin Cam 88 and Twin Cam 88B engines. The company told owners the rear cam bearing in some bikes had failed but would probably not cause engine failure. Harley extended its warranty for the part and made cam repair kits available for $495.

Tietsworth's complaint, which later involved four other owners, said the problem increased riders' safety risks and decreased the value of their Harleys. A circuit court judge threw out the original case, saying Tietsworth and others failed to show actual damages or economic loss, and its decision was eventually upheld by the state Supreme Court.

In 2004, Tietsworth asked a court to amend his original complaint to include contract and warranty claims. Thursday's Supreme Court decision ended that effort.