Kim Barovic, one of the shareholders of the Microsoft Corporation, has filed a lawsuit against the company in the federal court in Seattle over the mishandling of a technical error in the Internet Explorer browser that was already accounted for in 2009.
The suit filed on Friday has charges against Microsoft Executives including Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and Steve Ballmer, former CEO.
The error in the Internet Explorer browser prevented users from choosing a different browser, which doesn’t comply with the laws of the European Union.
This issue was raised in 2009 and Microsoft had responded saying, “We have fallen short in our responsibility to do this. Due to a technical error, we missed delivering the BCS software to PCs that came with the service pack 1 update to Windows 7.”
However, no corrective action was taken to rectify the error due to which about 15 million users had to use Internet Explorer as their default browser between the period of May 2011 to and July 2012.
Microsoft, failing to keep the promise they made in 2009, ended up dolling out a fine of $731 million in March 2013.
Barovic has demanded an immediate investigation into the matter and to take action against those executives who failed to fulfil their responsibility towards the commitment.
Microsoft is trying to hold its ground by stating “Ms. Barovic asked the board to investigate her demand and bring a lawsuit against the board and company executives,” in its email to Barovic. It further states, “The board thoroughly considered her demand as she requested and found no basis for such a suit.”
