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SCO Denied Again In Court
CDWalton writes "Groklaw has the latest in the SCO v. IBM case. Judge Wells denied SCO the opportunity to get depositions from involved parties after the date she had specified as the cutoff for those activities." From the article: "Brent Hatch started out talking about the request to take the depositions of Intel, Oracle, and The Open Group. Judge Wells brought up her October 12, 2005 order and said that depositions MUST be completed by the cutoff date. That any that cannot be taken by that date must be forgone. Brent stated that they properly noticed the depositions before the cutoff date and that they were not taken for reasons outside his, or his client's, control ... Judge Wells asked if the subpeonas were defective in some manner. Hatch: Yes, they were."
Why do cases like SCO vs IBM take too long to resolve? Are inefficiencies in the justice system to take part of the blame?
that Groklaw cheerfully accepts donations. PJ, we are not worthy.
I have been watching SCO's stock price for over a year. It goes from about $4.25 to $3.80 and goes back and forth every few days. Somebody is probably making big bucks buying and selling every few days.
http://Lenny.com
Although this is not directly related to the SCO case, which is about copyright and licensing rather than patents, it could be argued that the decision of the USPTO to award patents based on software or business processes has created the conditions in which legally based perpetual motion machines are feasible.
Pining for the fjords
The gist of it:
"Magistrate Wells supposes that the court orders and rules are for no other purpose than to be broken."
Essentially, SCO asked for information and IBM responded with a deluge of 340,000 documents. SCO is unable to process the information and the magistrate is getting annoyed.
Oh well, what the hell...
at the shareholder's expense. When this is over, and if/when SCO loses, there's going to be a shareholder lawsuit. I guaaraannnteee it! Which will mean the death of SCO as we know it. Sure, it'll come back somehow, restructured and all, but it'll be a eunuch.
Saturday is April 1. Slashdot will be shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Am I to understand that the "events beyond the control" of SCO that lead to the delay was that... SCO messed up their paperwork?
The fact that SCO considers inability to do their paperwork correctly an "event beyond their control" is rather telling I think.
Apparently Darl McBride will be giving a keynote speach at the Moscow Interop show in June. How the hell could anyone consider him for a kenote speach unless it's to throw stuff at him. Article on Yahoo at http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060215/law019.html?.v= 44.
-Aaron
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Judge Wells had set a deadline for the close of discovery, i.e. the process whereby the litigants can ask each other -- or third parties -- for disclosures of information via documents, depositions, and the like. There are certain exception to this deadline but they don't apply here.
SCO waited till the last minute to subpoena Intel, Oracle, and The Open Group, demanding that they provide witnesses for depositions. Besides being needlessly delayed, these subpoenas were procedurally defective in almost every way imaginable.
Naturally, the subpoenaed parties didn't show up for the scheduled depositions. That gave SCO an excuse to whine to the judge that they needed more time to do their depositions, because those other companies were misbehaving.
The judge's reply was, in essence: If you wanted to depose these people, you should have done it sooner, and you should have done it right. I gave you a deadline, I meant what I said, and now your time is up. You'll just have to do without those depositions.
Jesus jiminy cricket on a rocket-powered pogo stick!
Why aren't these SCO assholes and their coconspirators behind bars already?
This is ridiculous! - Since this SCO thing started, Martha Stewart traded stocks, got indicted, lied to investigators, got tried, found guilty, sentanced, finished her sentence, and returned to public life, and they can't even get this worthless SCO thing through depositions so they can decide it needs to be tossed out of court?
And they wonder why people think the court system is broken in this country.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
SCO has so far not been asked to make a specific accusation yet for gods sake.
You are incorrect. SCOX has been not only been "asked", but they have beeb ORDERED to specify what their allegations are, on *THREE* separate occasions. They've failed to do so (while claiming they have) each and every time.
The last time they did it, they filed everything under seal, so that nobody besides IBM can point out that they've failed again (and yes, IBM has pointed it out to the court - out of the 294 items that SCOX filed, IBM has said that only one (yes, *ONE*) is "specific" enough for the court, but that one doesn't actually identify anything that IBM did.
Why hasn't anybody asked SCO what bits of unix they own, what pieces SCO alleges Ibm stole.
Again, they did (and not just "asked", but *ordered*, by a federal judge.)
They still haven't said what IBM stole form them.
This bit is correct, but that doesn't mean that nobody has "asked".
From the article:
1. "...the January 12th subpoena was defective in both substance and service." The subpoena is a document compelling the other side to show up at a deposition with certain documents, ready to talk about certain topics. Its substance was basically its content, what it was intended to communicate. The service is the procedure by which the document creator gives it to the target person (organization) in a legally effective way. The judge says the subpoena was defective in both characteristics, so it's not legally binding.
2. "...That even had it not been defective it provided inadequate notice and time.
Judges like to give 2nd reasons, when available, for their decisions, out of meticulousness (which is a good thing in a judge) or desire to forestall appeals (not a bad thing). Here, the judge is saying that even if she was wrong about point #1, the subpoena is no good because it didn't fulfill legal requirements as to the amount of time before the deposition that the subpoena has to be delivered, and warning (notice) about the content of the deposition. Ideally, depositions are not supposed to be occasions for surprising witnesses with weird questions, but a Search For The Truth, so witnesses are supposed to be given fair notice & time to prepare.
3. "[the judge's] October 12th orders were clear, not subject to unilateral decisions to violate."
TRANSLATED: the judge is really, really pissed. SCO's lawyers are giving totally bogus arguments, in her evaluation, which not only needlessly delays this particular case, but also strikes at the integrity of the entire judicial process.
It appears from this article that SCO believes its only hope would seem to be to bait the judge into saying or doing something stupid, like Judge Jackson in the Microsoft case a few years back.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Scox requested, and got, complete code to every revision of AIX, released in the last 20 years.
The request makes no sense. Scox doesn't own AIX, in fact scox doesn't own sysV. And even if scox did, the AIX code has nothing to do with scox's accusations. These accusations are nothing but assertions on scox's part, after three years, and three court orders, scox has not provided a shread of evidence.
When scox first requested the AIX revisions, Wells only gave scox five years worth. Scox whined and whined; and finally after a 5 month "under advisement" period, scox was granted all the discovery they requested. Billions of lines of code. Of course, scox also had to be given time to sort though all the discovery.
Scox is still requested more irrelevant discovery, even though the discovery period is over.
Becasue the the judge did not fully grant scox's request, the cheerleaders on groklaw are having a party about scox got their asses handed to them.
Go figure.
A losing party should not be allowed to drag out the proceedings hoping to force the opposition to spend money.
You are assuming that SCO is the losing party, but the case has not yet been tried. The jury trial isn't scheduled to begin until next February.
The system is deliberately set up to allow both SCO and IBM to file crossclaims, bring in parties that are necessary for full resolution of all the issues, and conduct thorough discovery. It emphasizes thoroughness over speed.
It is expensive and time-consuming, which is why most businesses would prefer not to bring lawsuits. SCO obviously brought suit because they realized they couldn't survive without a successful lawsuit. It was a desperate gamble, but before discovery, nobody actually *knew* that IBM would prevail, which is why it survived a motion for summary judgment. The facts were very much in dispute. Everyone talks about it as if at the moment the original complaint was filed, we all had the facts at our disposal to disprove the SCO case. But what if during discovery, SCO had come up with a "smoking gun" of some kind?
My point is that the judge's role is to be an impartial referee in the fight between SCO and IBM. A judge who decided the case before trial would have his decision reversed in a heartbeat.
If we operated under the so-called "English Rule", which is used throughout most of the world, the loser would pay costs. This would cut down on frivolous lawsuits, but it could also potentially stifle legitimate use of the courts by parties. There is serious and ongoing debate as to whether the English Rule system actually reduces the cost of litigation or leads to a more "just" outcome.
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Did this post get a (5, Funny) because of the remark about throwing stuff at Darl? Or because he misspelled "speech" three times?