A 9-year-old boy has sued Nintendo of America and Major League Baseball over a video game he says fails to live up to its promises, his lawyer said Wednesday.
Lawrence Kanaga said Wednesday that he filed the suit in Bridgeport Superior Court on behalf of Clark Thiemann against Nintendo, LJN Toys Ltd. and Major League Baseball.LJN makes the game for Nintendo and the Major Leagues endorse it.
The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, aims to stop Nintendo from continuing to produce or sell the game, Kanaga said. A hearing has been scheduled for Feb. 20, the attorney said.
Thiemann also wants a return of the $40 he used to buy the video baseball game, Kanaga said. The Westport boy made the money by returning cans and bottles.
Thiemann says the video game falsely claimed its users can simulate being a manager of a baseball team by choosing which ballplayers to field.
"Sure, you've always wanted to be a professional ballplayer, but have you ever thought about being a manager?" the game label stated. "Well, here's your chance to prove yourself both on and off the field."
Shortly after buying the game in October, Thiemann discovered it contained insufficient data to allow him to make the managerial decisions it promised, his attorney said.
"Basically, the game purports to give you things it simply doesn't give you," Kanaga said.
"For example, it says, each team has its own roster but it really doesn't," Kanaga added. "It just has lists of uniform numbers, rather than names."
Kanaga said the uniform numbers provided insufficient information for would-be managers to choose which players to use because none of the baseball reference books was based on jersey numbers.
"There's simply no way to correlate a jersey number with a player's name," Kanaga said. "So there's no way to verify the statistics included in the game which are really not all that complete."
The attorney said Thiemann had communicated his dissatisfaction with the defendants but their response had been "unsatisfactory."
Nintendo, which is based in Redmond, Wash., had no comment Wednesday.