App Developers Win Round In Privacy Lawsuit

A federal judge has dismissed a privacy lawsuit by consumers against 17 tech companies on the grounds that the consumers' written complaint -- which is supposed to outline their allegations and legal theories -- is too unwieldy for them to proceed.

"The court is not sure who these voluminous screeds are addressed to," U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks in Austin (TX) wrote in an order throwing out the 343-page complaint. "Certainly, they are not written with an eye toward this court's busy docket. Perhaps, plaintiffs had the court of public opinion in mind when they drafted them." The lawsuit dates to March, when a group of consumers sued Path, Hipster, Twitter, Facebook and other tech companies for allegedly collecting or storing users' address books without their consent.