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SCO Denied Motion To Change IBM Case Again
Rob writes "SCO Group Inc's attempt to change its legal case against IBM Corp for the third time
has been denied by the judge, who has also set the two companies a deadline to present
their respective evidence with specificity. Despite repeated public declarations
that it has evidence Linux contains Unix code that infringes its copyright, SCO
has yet to present any evidence to the court." Bad news for them all around, lately.
SCOX is no longer a standard, retail-invested stock. The stock is EXCEEDINGLY lightly traded, likely only being held my insiders and investment houses, both scared what will happen to the stock if they unloaded.
Or... perhaps, they're saying. 'If I try to sell this, it'll plumment to near-zero solely on my measly holdings. I might as well just hang onto it just in case something interesting happens with the case'.
In short... this is NOT a normal stock anymore. I've given up keeping an eye on it and praying for its collapse. I'm neither long, nor short, but I simply don't want the insiders to make money on this. It'll probably hover around the $3.50-$4 mark right up until the company is liquidated.
I take heart in the fact that NOONE can offload any significant portion of this stock without it crashing.
Dad is a Federal circuit court judge (former Chief Judge of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals) and my cousin is on the Michigan state bench. That's the Honorable David R. Hansen and the Honorable Katherine L. Hansen, respectively. Dad was appointed to the state bench in 1976 by the (Republican) Governor Robert Ray; he was appointed to the Federal bench for the District of Northern Iowa in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan; he was appointed to the appellate bench by President George H.W. Bush. Officially, Dad has no political party--he's not allowed to, as part of the Federal code of judicial ethics--but I think you can probably figure out from his appointment history that Teddy Kennedy doesn't send him Christmas cards.
My cousin Katherine, on the other hand, was appointed to the Michigan state bench by Governor Jennifer M. Granholm. Governor Granholm, as you are no doubt aware, is so far in the left wing of the Democratic Party that she was honored with floor time at the last National Convention. I'm not sure whether her judicial ethics allow her to have a party affiliation or not, but... you can draw your own conclusions.
Why does this matter? Because whether I look at a Federal judge repeatedly appointed by Republicans, or whether I look at a State judge appointed by a dyed-in-the-wool lefty Democrat, I see the same thing: namely, brother, you are wrong, and have no idea just how wrong you are.
Judges try very hard to be impartial in all hearings... impartial to the point of rudeness. If you step into court and claim that the sky is blue, both Dad and Katherine will interrupt you to ask whether you're going to introduce meterologic testimony into the record attesting to that fact. (Well, Katherine would probably have the good grace to wait until you were finished. Dad's approach is the kinder of the two, though; when Katherine quietly pulls the rug out from under your feet, thoroughly confounding the last ten minutes of your argument, you long for the rough kindness of an interruption.)
It makes it hell trying to have normal conversations with them, by the by; they have a very hard time disengaging from judicial-think. When I say that I think I did well on an exam, Dad wants to know precisely what evidence leads me to that conclusion. When I talk to Katherine and mention that I have a paper submitted to Black Hat 2005, Katherine doesn't say "that's nice"; she insists that I sit her down and teach her enough computational theory so that she can decide for herself my odds of getting published.
Both of them live and die by a mantra: neither one of them gives half a damn what you know, they only care what you can prove.
Nor are they "watchers" of the court in any sense. They are the administrators of the court. They're the ones who decide the ground rules of the court hearing. They decide these ground rules based on pleadings; attorneys for one side say that under one Supreme Court ruling, the standard for evidence should be this, while attorneys for the other side say that decision didn't foresee this particular eventuality and it should be discarded. Only a fool would claim they are "watchers". They are not combatants in the courtroom, in the sense of trial lawyers, no, but they are both the arbiters of fairness and the executors of decisions. If you're able to convince the judge of a fact, then brother, your job is done. At that point the other attorney isn't fighting you anymore, he's fighting the judge, and that's a fight the other lawyer is--with greater than 90% certainty--going to lose.
Impartiality is difficult to attain. The best solution judges have found, either on the Left or on the Right, is ruthless, r