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> Nixon was pardoned for any crimes he "might" have committed, so I don't think it requires
> admission of guilt. (Though there might be a perception of guilt and political fallout from that.)

so did you catch the more recent news? Nixon was KNOWN to have committed treason before he was elected. LBJ's spies had a senior person in his campaign, on a recorded phone call to South Viet Nam, urging the South Vietnamese to pull out of peace talks, promising a better deal under a Nixon administration.

Clear collusion with a foriegn party to affect US elections, not just in a trivial way, but but pulling out of peace talks against US foriegn policy interests. This information was not made public until sometime in the past year or two.

> Even if it did, Obama could just pardon him on his (Obama's) last day of office. If they delay the
> trial with pre-trial motions for a couple of years, the pardon would come through before anyone does
> any time.

However, why would they allow that to even happen? http://www.atra.org/legislation/federal/federal-employees-liability-reform-and-tort-compensation-aAct

...Act to provide for the substitution of the United States as a defendant in any action where one of its employees is sued for damages as a result of an alleged common law tort committed by the employee within the scope of his or her employment. Congress enacted the Westfall Act to respond to the United States Supreme Court's decision in Westfall v. Erwin, 484 U.S. 292 (1988), which limited a federal official's absolute immunity from tort claims to situations where the official's actions were "within the outer perimeter of an official's duties and . . . discretionary in nature."

Or this article on how it is being used to shield the members of the Bush Cabal: http://rt.com/usa/bush-amnesty-iraq-war-847/

Industries that have failed or may fail that face the same problem as this post include Aviation (they gained some protection from Congress via the 1984 GARA act), Education (teachers have to make their plans dumbed down for all, cut field trips due to liability issues, etc), Medicine (the cost of medical care is high because of the liability costs for valid care that somebody may have got a different opinion on).

The American Tort Reform Association has a good short writeup on the Impacts on the Economy due to current Tort laws.

It's only a matter of time until it comes to programming/computers.

Schools get sued more than you think. Just the act of defending yourself is enough to drain valuable funds from a town. And one big successful lawsuit, especially if the town's insurer deems it not covered, can really impoversh a town. The threat of a lawsuit alone is enough to turn government agencies and businesses into pathetic nannies who have to point out the obvious dangers of everything so someone can't claim they didn't know better in court.

Now you can get sued if the curriculum doesn't make every single parent happy. Good luck with that! Lexington MA Lawsuit

If they had asked the court to drop the charges because they were a UK entity and a US court doesn't have jurisdiction, the court probably would have agreed.

Don't count on it.
This court is listed among the top judicial hellholes in the country.

Then they claimed it didn't.

Which is something that is obvious to anyone with a functioning brain.

Spamhaus does not have operations in the US. The court is in the US.

How much are you supposed to respect a judge who is obviously dishonest/incompetent? Not only does the court not have jurisdiction, there are indications they might not receive a fair trial.
Isn't there some point at which a court no longer deserves your respect?
This court is listed among the top judicial hellholes in the country. I would contend that as soon as they figured this out, they made the right choice by cutting off contact.

The right resolution for this case is for the judge to spend a few days in jail. His actions are a grevious abuse of the public trust that has been placed in him. For fuck's sake, Spamhaus wasn't even properly served. They sent a freakin EMAIL. Any mistakes on Spamhaus' part pales in comparison to that single fact.

Try looking at it from their perspective. You get an email that you're being sued frivilously in a disrepuatble court in a foreign country that doesn't respect the rights of non-citizens.

I'm amazed at the knee-jerk reaction of so many people here. I hate spam as much as the next person, but claiming that the judge is ignorant, stupid, or malicious is ridiculous.

Why?
Even the most trivial investigation would have shown that the court had no jurisdiction of a UK entity.

Perhaps you were not aware that this court is listed among the top judicial hellholes in the country?

Spamhaus should either have challenged the court's jurisdiction from the outset or, having accepted it, complied with its orders and defended the suit.

Why should a UK organization bear the costs of the broken US legal system? They made the right choice by leaving us to wallow in our own feces. Let the court pull a UK TLD over a frivilous lawsuit. It will make us look terrible and maybe we'll finally loose control over ICANN. Maybe if enough bad things happen, we'll even decide to fix our court system.

How did the Illinois judge decide they had jurisdiction over a UK-only company in the first place?

Judicial Hellholes are places that have a disproportionately harmful impact on civil litigation. Litigation tourists, guided by their personal injury lawyers seek out these places because they know they will produce a positive outcome - an excessive verdict or settlement, a favorable precedent, or both.

That's why it's called "jackpot justice". Just pick a lawer, and a topic and let him spin the wheel. If your lucky, you will cash in on millions at the expense of the rest of society.

As such, I'm in favor of Tort Reform. http://www.atra.org/

They come up ever so often under the term of tort reform and "looser pays". The biggest problem is that most of this comes down to a state decision, however it is something that we in the USA will have to solve because of the problems it is leading to in the area of medical and social affairs.
As an example of how bad it is, the Las Vegas casinos were offered information on terrorist activities around various casinos, they declinded because once they know about the threats they will have more problems with the lawyers if anything happens then then whatever possible damage the terrorist could do.
Here is one article on 2004 US election. The American tort reform association has article detailing the various changes that various stats are doing.

Okay, I'm going to spend a little while looking over this site, but given that I'm UK-based, it might take some time for me to 'translate' things into terms I understand.
In Britain, we have a system called legal aid which provides lawyers for those who can't afford them. If I get sued by SCO for running linux, I may be eligible for legal aid.
If I have to be re-imbursed for expenses, and I need to take SCO to court for such costs, well, there's always legal aid, and if I can't get that, there's plenty of No Win, No Fee legal beagles out there.

Ironic that the U.S. legal system that was founded on principles of personal responsibility now rewards immaturity and greed.

It's not ironic, it's sad. Very sad. It's a consequence of 'the people' not being motivated enough to say 'hey, something is fucked up with certain class of persons using the legal system that was supposed to fairly resolve conflicts for what effectively boils down to blackmail.'

The problem is that everyone is too busy minding their own lives, individuals are unwilling to believe that they could theoretically change things, and public information relies on organs that have no interest in impartiality but profit best if issues are blown up into hollywood style dualistic fights betweent he 'good' and the 'evil'.

What everyone apparently needs to be reminded of is that if we do not want a legal system that can be used to with a single lawsuit amass personal wealth far beyond what can be earned by -say- a lifetime of work saving lives in an emergency room, we have the power to make it so (granted, it'll take a few years, a lot of organization and it won't be easy).

Warning - blatant promotion of organizations I support follows: If this seems like a worthwhile goal to you too, have a look at http://www.atra.org/atra/, http://www.overlawyered.com/ or join one of the many local 'Citizens against Lawsuit abuse' organizations (both sites have a number of local links). Contribute time or money, and maybe, five years down the road, people like David Boies will conclude that it is in their best interest to look for other ways to apply their intelligence to make a living. Any maybe, just maybe, they'll end up doing something that will actually be beneficial to society as a whole.

Support Tort Reform!!!

American Tort Reform Association

The Economic Benefits of Tort Reform

American Tort Reform Foundation

As to the benefit of local judges, you may want to think again. A local judge in the Bronx recently presided over a lawsuit in which a local jury awarded $51 million to Darryl Barnes, who was paralyzed when he drew a TEC-9 on a police officer who fired first. Bronx voters favor judges who dispense Robin Hood justice.

Similarly, local courts have made Mississippi and many other southern states "judicial hellholes" for product liability litigation according to the American Tort Reform Association. The problem here is that the voters in the court's jurisdiction tend to identify with the plaintiff. The corporations sued generally have their factories elsewhere, so it doesn't affect the local voters if jobs dry up. On the other hand, a large award can bring a lot of money to a small county. It is this abuse of discretion by local judges and juries that makes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce call for moving litigation out of local courts and into federal courts while consumer rights groups want to keep litigation in local courts.

As to your comment, "If someone has really done something so wrong that they deserve to pay out 30 billion dollars in punative damages then they should go to jail instead," I would only direct your attention to O.J. Simpson. O.J. did not go to jail (again, your beloved local justice did a fine job with him, as it did with the murderers of Emmett Till) and punitive damages were the most justice he received.

At the same time, the number of liability suits ending in bizarre awards is much smaller than most people think. Just as the press tend to exaggerate spectacular events, such as civilian casualties in Iraq, and make them seem more common than they are, they also exaggerate the frequency of liability blunders (absurd verdicts, excessive awards, etc.) and do not follow up six months later when absurd awards are thrown out on appeal.

Here are some facts, courtesy of the Center for Justice and Democracy and Public Citizen:

• 0.02% of all civil cases handled by the state courts concern product liability.
• The defendants win more than half of these cases.
• When plaintiffs do win product liability cases, more than half the awards are less than $27,000.
• Awards over $1 million are most common when the plaintiff has suffered grievous injury (paralysis, brain damage, amputation) and over half of these large awards are either reversed or reduced substantially by the trial judge or on appeal.
• Only a small fraction of a percent of all findings for the plaintiff award punitive damages. Between 1965 and 1994, there were 379 punitive damage awards in the U.S. in product liability lawsuits. Half of these awards were less than $50,000.
• According to the Consumer Federation of America, liability suits add about 0.26% to the cost of consumer goods. This number is similar to what the National Association of Insurance Commissioners found.

Okay, we're getting offtopic, but the parent post is just silly. ATRA has nothing to do with this! This is a COPYRIGHT claim, not a TORT claim. ATRA is a business lobbying group, that generally supports limits on certain types of civil suits -- specifically, those suits that are harmful to business. I don't think it's a stretch to say that (to most businesses) that does not include copyright suits.

Don't believe me? Check out their own website! In fact, don't be surprised if American Greetings turns out to have contributed to ATRA!

For general information on curbing all sorts of lawsuit abuses across the country, you might want to take a look at the American Tort Reform Association.

that, as the youmaybenext website pointed out, they are not suing anyone in California, especially considering that large parts of California are considered by the American Tort Reform Association to be judicial hellholes because of their tendency to dole out huge plaintiffs' awards. Anyone have any speculation as to why they are not filing suits in CA?