A New Jersey attorney is suing Microsoft for $1.75 million, alleging it failed to resolve a verification issue that cut him off from his paid work email and thus communications with judges and clients, crippling him. your ability to handle your caseload and leaving you risk committing ethical violations.
In the lawsuit (PDF), first filed in New York State but later moved to the Southern District of New York, David M Schlachter seeks $750,000 in damages and $1 million in punitive damages. He alleges that he lost access to his Microsoft business email account in May, but that the software giant was unable to get him out of a verification cycle that prevented him from accessing his account, which he says he pays through a monthly subscription.
The problem started, according to the lawyer’s complaint, when he tried to log in on May 10 and the system asked for his “2-step verification.”
Schlachter describes being stuck in an “error code 500121” loop and provides a screenshot in the complaint.
According to the complaint, it has a customer service line but does not have the ability to send emails to technical support. He alleges that he waited on hold for three hours before receiving help from a customer service specialist. “After 30 minutes of talking to the specialist and answering questions, the CS person told her it was a ‘business account’ and she would need to contact the business support team.”
He goes on to state that that same night, he texted customer service and received the business technical support line, receiving a case number on May 12. Schlachter claims that after this point, she was unable to reach anyone on the customer support line for four days. “He would wait on hold for 3-5 hours at a time (this is not an exaggeration) and then the line would go dead.” On May 15, he alleges they gave him another case number and promised they would call him “at 12 noon,” but “nobody called him.”
He claims to have called again twice a day for the next five days. “Every time he called, the support person told him that he could not be transferred to either a supervisor or the engineer working on his issue. They are working on it and it will be resolved soon, to paraphrase.”
He goes on to claim: “The tech support person also called him on his alternate number, his office line, and checked when he answered.” Although they sent you a text message with “verification codes”, the problem was not resolved.
The complaint was moved to the Southern District of New York late last week and the filing states that “this matter remains unresolved.”
Among other things, Schlachter alleges that he “has not been given access to NJ eCourts because the online system requests email verification for that account”; he cannot “pay loans because the online portal system for loan payments is linked to that account”; “does not receive any communication from the federal bankruptcy courts and has open cases,” and cannot contact “judges, clerks, adversaries, colleagues, clients, trustees in the United States” who have the address.
The lawyer explained in the complaint:
Claiming he is losing business and risking the removal of his ethical and professional licenses, he accuses Microsoft of both breach of contract and “unlawful business dealings” for “unreasonably delaying the simple remedy of providing access to a single email electronic”. Fox Rothschild Trial Attorney Michael Lieberman Represents (PDF) Microsoft. We have asked the company for feedback. ®
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