Amstrad pursues complete victory

Amstrad is appealing against a UK High Court decision to award it #27.9 million on top of damages it had previously won from Seagate Technology on the grounds that the payment is ?insufficient?.

In May, the PC manufacturer was awarded #57.5 million in damages against Seagate Technology, eight years after it was first alleged that the hard disk vendor supplied Amstrad with faulty drives in the late 80s (PC Dealer, 14 May).

In the US, Amstrad is considering bringing fresh charges of fraud against Seagate. It will be seeking punitive damages, but is refusing to reveal details of the claim.

Amstrad is holding Seagate responsible for the failure of its PC2386 office computer.

Its claims against the disk drive manufacturer include the loss of profit on actual and potential sales of the machine in 1990 and 1991, plus the cost of acquiring replacement hard disk controllers, which Seagate had originally said were the cause of the disk drive failures.

The interest payment has increased the total awarded to Amstrad to #85.5 million, but the manufacturer has claimed that it is owed at least #10 million more. The PC maker originally sought #105 million in damages.

An Amstrad representative said that the company ?doesn?t think this is enough; it?s at least #10 million short and we?ve now lodged an appeal which could take one to two years?.

He also said the UK court had ruled that Seagate should pay 80 per cent of legal costs, estimated to be between #2 million and #3 million.

According to the Amstrad representative, the PC manufacturer has set an unspecified date in January 1998 for its lawsuit against Western Digital, its other disk driver vendor.