I’m sorry to ruin your Friday afternoon with another update on the year-long Blizzard scandal, but it must be done, as Activision-Blizzard has lost another round in court.
Readers will recall that Activision-Blizzard has been trying to get the courts to shut down the sexual discrimination and harassment lawsuit originally filed against it by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing aka DFEH (now the California Civil Rights Division aka CRD). Activision-Blizzard had argued that the case should be tossed on the grounds that the DFEH/CRD attorneys had previously worked on the similar case against Acti-Blizz from the EEOC, which it characterized as an ethics violation. This is the same lawsuit under which Acti-Blizz itself has been accused of destroying evidence and corruption.
However, as Axios first reported, the judge in the case not only denied Acti-Blizz’s request for summary judgment but a week later also rebuffed the company’s demands for more records on the state attorneys, essentially suggesting that Activision-Blizzard was misconstruing the relevant ethics statute.
“[Judge] Dillon ruled that the relevant ethics rules focused on blocking lawyers from switching sides in a lawsuit or going into private practice to prosecute the same case for greater profit,” Axios explains. But Dillon noted none of that had actually happened in this case: “Far from promoting the public interest, any attempt to disqualify Plaintiff strongly conflicts with public policy,” he says in his order.
According to a fresh statement Activision-Blizzard made to Axios, the company nevertheless intends to continue its assault on the state agency attempting to hold it accountable to its workers – a tactic that’s been rather openly part of its playbook since July 21st, 2021.
