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Facebook faces another class-action suit, this time over kids' purchases

Facebook isn't exactly a stranger to the courtroom, but it'll soon have another legal headache to deal with thanks to a recent court ruling out of San Jose, California. You see, US District Court Judge Beth Labson decided on Tuesday that in spite of the company's best efforts, Facebook will have to deal with a brewing class action lawsuit involving kids, credit cards and the company's long-dead virtual currency.

If you don't remember Facebook Credits, well, you're probably not alone. The company tried for about three years to transform Credits from a not-so-wild-eyed idea into a viable way for people to convert cold hard cash into, erm, Farmville renovations. The entire Credits initiative got the boot in mid-2012, but somewhere along the way two kids used their parents' credit and debit cards to buy said Credits... and lots of them. Facebook basically balked (potentially in violation of Calfornia law) when said spawnbearers argued for hundreds of dollars in refunds, so the parents promptly filed suit against Facebook in April 2012. Coincidentally, Credits died an ignominious death in a post on Facebook's Developers blog just two months later. That's the thrust of Facebook's latest legal odyssey, but the juiciest parts of the story have yet to be written -- Labson estimated that hundreds of thousands of potential plaintiffs could surface in search of their financial comeuppance when this whole thing comes to trial on October 19.