Bush Supreme Court Nominee Former Microsoft Lawyer

DaveM writes "Bush's most recent Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, successfully argued that people who were sold defective software by Microsoft weren't "injured," and couldn't participate in a class action against the company. The case involved unstable compression features in MS DOS 6.0, which were corrected by a $9.95 update, MS DOS 6.2. Plaintiffs wanted Microsoft to offer the updates for free, but eventually lost to Miers' arguments."

Comments

What do you expect?

[Viper Daimao]

What was she supposed to argue? "My client is guilty."?

Re:What do you expect?

[GreyPoopon]

What was she supposed to argue? "My client is guilty."?

And more importantly, if you read through other news articles about her, you'll see that many of her arguments are highly based on logic. In the mentioned Microsoft case, her argument was against the "class" that was chosen for the lawsuit. The plaintiffs chose everyone who bought DOS 6.0 as for the class, arguing that they had been harmed and shouldn't have to pay $10 for an upgrade. However, not everybody who bought the product was using, or intended to use the compression features, so it was difficult to justify including all of them in the class. Therefore, the class was decertified. The suit was dismissed and dropped because the lawyer representing the plaintiffs didn't want to bother with actually getting a more reasonable class determined for the suit.

You know, here's a news flash...

[hivemind_mvgc]

Most lawyers argue a case because they're paid to argue the case, not because they have some personal convictions involved in the case.

Microsoft pays well.

I fail to see any relevance to this story, beyond the usual anti-Microsoft rabble rousing.

Re:Nice flaming headline.

[saintp]

Uh, how is that a flame? It's a fact. Bush's latest nominee used to be a lawyer for Microsoft. Whoopty-doo. How would you prefer they put it? "Bush court nominee hugs fuzzy bunnies, gives flags to orphans"?

Re:Key phrase

[SimilarityEngine]

But it goes further, to say: if you have defective brakes, you are not entitled to a free replacement - even if those brakes are shown to have caused serious accidents.

Re:Wrong process anyway

[AvitarX]

Having the president appoint supreme court judges is wrong anyway. There should be a better process of selecting them. How's it done in other countries?


In soviet Russia supreme court selects you.

Re:Wrong process anyway

[leroybrown]

wouldn't it be, "In Soviet Russia, Supreme Court selects president"? oh, wait...

Re:Nice flaming headline.

[monkeydo]

It's like people expect lawyers to have scruples or something.

Yeah, lawyers who zealously represent their cllients even when they personally disagree are like those scumbag doctors who'll treat just about anyone. I mean, wouldn't the world be a better place if Christian doctors refused to treat homosexuals, and liberal doctors refused to treat Republicans? Of course not. And just like medical care, the legal system only works if everyone has the best counsel available to them.

Re:Nice flaming headline.

[Shakrai]

if he wasn't Christian, the liberals would not have a problem with the guy.

Respectfully, I beg to differ.

My disgust with Dubya has nothing to do with the fact that he is religious. It has to do with the fact that he is a dangerous neo-con with absolutely no regard for the opinions or suffering or others. And believe it or not but liberals can be religious too. We just don't believe in forcing it on people the way that members of the far-right do.

mathematics degree

[PMuse]

One thing that differs about Miers from most of the court -- her undergraduate degree (mathematics).

The others are Roberts (liberal arts), *O'Connor (economics), *Rehnquist (political science), Breyer (liberal arts, math, science), Ginsburg (government), Kennedy (liberal arts, economics), Scalia (history), Souter (liberal arts), Stevens (english literature), Thomas (seminary, english).