Judge Allows Lawsuit Over Which Bond Movies Must Be in a Box Set

In what sounds like something you’d be more likely to hear in an argument between Bond movie geeks rather than a courtroom—unless maybe we’re talking about Judge John Hodgman—a judge has decided to allow a lawsuit on whether or not a box set of Bond movies actually contains all the Bond movies it should. … They left Quantum of Solace out, didn’t they? That’s fair.

OK, fine, it’s not actually an argument over which Bond films deserve to be in a box set—we’ll leave that to the internet to fight out until the end of time. The argument in question is over whether a box set marketed as containing “all” of the Bond films is allowed to leave some out, and no, it wasn’t Quantum of Solace that missed the cut. Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again weren’t included in the set, for whatever reason.

The lawsuit is a class action filed by the legal team of Mary L. Johnson, who bought the Bond box set in question on Amazon, reasonably assuming that the world “all” means the same thing to everyone. The defendants, MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, contend that they were just using “all” as a marketing term, and the judge isn’t having it, resulting Judge Ricardo S. Martinez issuing what is surely one of the best legal opinions of our time:

“A jury must determine whether a reasonable person would expect ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘Never Say Never Again’ to be included in a complete set of James Bond films. From the Defendants’ perspective, this claim will have to ‘Die Another Day.'”

Honestly, as funny as it all sounds, I’m very much in the corner of the plaintiffs who think words still actually mean what they’re supposed to.

(via Variety, image: NBC)

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