Microsoft is embroiled in lawsuits and regulatory actions relating to sexual harassment and discrimination. It has also faced accusations of foreign bribery. Da Dirt Diggers Digest
Press accounts of Microsoft’s $70 billion offer for Activision Blizzard make frequent references to the legal problems it would inherit from the gaming company, which is embroiled in lawsuits and regulatory actions relating to sexual harassment and discrimination.
Those problems are real, but it is misleading to suggest that Microsoft is a boy scout of a company with no legal difficulties of its own. While none of the cases involve the same allegations surrounding Activision, Microsoft has, as shown in Violation Tracker, racked up more than $300 million in regulatory fines and class action lawsuit settlements over the past two decades.
The largest cases involve anti-competitive practices—the same issue that made Microsoft notorious in the 1990s. In 2009 the company paid $100 million to resolve a case brought by the Mississippi Attorney General, and in 2012 it paid $70 million to settle a similar suit brought by a group of cities and counties in California.
