A New AOL Suit Popping-Up

A judge in Miami has allowed AOL's hourly plan subscribers to go ahead with a suit over time loss due to pop-up ads. An estimated $20 million dollars has been overpaid due to such ads, say the America Online subscribers that filled the suit.

Attorney for the subscribers, Andrew Tramon, says "they're collecting incredible sums of money from advertisers, at the same time, they're charging you for something they're getting paid to put on the screen."

AOL spokesman Rich D'Amato said Tuesday that the case is "without merit" and says AOL will appeal the ruling.

In Virginia, when AOL is headquartered, class-action suits are barred. The judge though, said it would be unreasonable for each plaintiff in the suit to have to file in small-claims court in Virginia, so most likely a large class-action case will be filed elsewhere.

Though AOL now has a feature to turn off pop-up ads, this feature was not enabled until after the 1999 filling of the suit.