SCO Puts a Cap on its Legal Expenses

prostoalex writes "The SCO Group reached an agreement with the lawyers to limit the litigation expenses to $31 million until the IBM lawsuit is resolved. The company already paid $12 million to Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP, Kevin McBride and Berger Singerman, which provide legal services to the company."

Comments

So where's the rest going?

[tomhudson]

From the article:

SCO Group said it paid its attorneys roughly $12.6 million under the agreement for outstanding legal fees and expenses. For future legal fees, the company is to pay a total of $12 million plus contingency fees, it said.

Okay, that gives a total of $24.6 million. Which leaves $6.4 million unaccounted for. Or is this what McBride is going to have SCO pay Kevin?

Kevin McBride, WTF?

[mr.henry]

Is he related to Darl?

Math time!

[Lord_Slepnir]

Alright, so this crap has been going on for about 18 months now. A bit longer, but let's just say 18 for a round number. That has cost them $12 million. Thier cap is $31 million. 31 / 12 = 2.58. Now we multiply that by how long they've done this, so 2.58 * 18 = 46.5 months, or a little over 2 more years, assuming they keep spending the way they are now

This is less than encouraging

Linux is not relevant to this - two man scam

[dbIII]

It may as well have been some secret snake oil formula at stake. I see the whole thing of the CEO of a small company setting up an unwinnable court case against IBM as a way to funnel funds into the family pockets. Stay tuned for SCO to implode and Darl to sue for what he can get from it's smoking corpse. If legal dogs chase, Darl will simply funnel the funds somewhere inaccessable, pretend he is bankrupt, and blame it all on those kids and their darn penguin destroying the American way.

Re:God Bless The Laywers

[yog]

I know you're kidding but it's still a sad commentary on the way the legal profession has undermined the economy.

Those lawyers have done nothing for SCO and yet they have greatly enriched themselves from shareholders' money. Granted some of that money came from outfits with questionable morals themselves, like The Canopy Group, but that's also money that could have been invested in hiring software people to help improve their products and their competitive position in the market. SCO was once a reputable company, after all.

Here's a question for some legal expert. Since Boies et al were paid in stock a while back, they are now a major stockholder in SCO, 25% as I recall. I wonder if they can therefore be sued by any parties who have a grievance against SCO? Like practically the entire open source development community, IBM, Redhat, Novell, etc.

I have personal experience with the damage they have caused; I have dealt with people in the embedded market who were avoiding embedded Linux because of "the lawsuit". The very lawyers who represent this rogue company are its owners; they are purely and openly in it for the profit regardless of right and wrong.

easy way out

[sPaKr]

Any one else wonder if SCO is just setting themselfs an easy out later? I mean when this doesnt go SCOs way and they hit the cap all Darl has to say is 'We would have won if we had more time and money' then he keeps the shadow over linux serving his Micky$oft masters. Since this was never about making money only hurting linux, I suspect this is a winning stratgy in the end. All MS has to say is point to some shlep that buys up the reminants of SCO and say they can sue you, this was never settled. Lets hope SCO implodes and someone like IBM or Novell buys them for pennies on the dollar and kills this lawsuit business.