Three U.S. citizens have filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft over Updategate.

Florida Windows users Al Khafaji, Ahmad Abdulreda and Robert Stahl filed the suit in a federal court, claiming that Microsoft “coerced” them into upgrading to Windows 10 and that the “unintentional” upgrades borked their machines.

There have been rumblings all year from customers talking of class-action suits, but this is the first time anyone has actually followed through with the threat.

Californian travel agent Teri Goldstein was awarded $10,000 in a small claims court last month after the Windows update broke her computer, but Microsoft stressed that it settled the case to save money on court costs.

This time, by filing a class action, the three have made it easy for anyone else who feels aggrieved to hop on to the case.

The Seattle Times quoted part of the complaint: “Microsoft engaged in a reckless and negligent premise with catastrophic consequences for some of Defendant’s customers whose devices were rendered useless and incapable of normal recovery operations.”

Sound like a familiar complaint? It goes on: “Plaintiffs were coerced into adopting Windows 10 or had Windows 10 installed in various unintentional manners with subsequent damage to their computers after which Plaintiffs sustained unnecessary and avoidable stress, confusion, loss of time and significant monetary damage all at the hands of Defendant.”

So basically one of the many tenants of Updategate.

The complaint acknowledged that the upgrade is reversible, but said that only 10 per cent of people are likely to have the know-how to reverse the process.

It has been said as the year has gone on that very few people understand the rather sneaky framing of the update process sufficiently to stop it happening in the first place.

We confronted Microsoft about this last year and were told that the information was there for all to see and that people should read Terry Myerson’s blog.

(pause for face-palms)

The lawsuit continued: “With the widespread dissemination of Windows 10 the Defendant seeks to maintain its position of dominance in the marketplace.

“The Windows 10 system adds yet another dimension to its extant body of operating systems and in effect keeps the consumer ‘in the fold’ while gaining a captive audience for Defendant’s ancillary products.”

The complaint goes on to refer to dystopian fiction such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Terminator film franchise in terms of Microsoft’s disregard for privacy and free will.

Microsoft, as ever, has cried kaka. “We believe the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit and we are confident we’ll be successful in court,” the firm said.

As ardent supporters of those frustrated by Microsoft’s handling of the upgrade process, we’ll watch this one with interest. µ