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Child Abuse Verdict Held Back By MS Word Glitch

Posted by samzenpus on from the messy-verdict dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Last week several defendants including one high-profile TV presenter were sentenced in Portugal in what has been known as the Casa Pia scandal. The judges delivered on September 3 a summary of the 2000-page verdict, which would be disclosed in full only three days later. The disclosure of the full verdict has been postponed from September 8 to a yet-to-be-announced date, allegedly because the full document was written in several MS Word files which, when merged together, retained 'computer related annotations which should not be present in any legal document.' (Google translated article.) Microsoft specialists were called in to help the judges sort out the 'text formatting glitch,' while the defendants and their lawyers eagerly wait to access the full text of the verdict."

4 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Will this affect the deadline for appeal? by Gnavpot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think the important question here is not whether Word or OpenOffice was used.

    The important question is:
    Will this affect the deadline for appeal?

    Not having adequate time to read the full verdict before deciding whether to appeal or not would in my eyes be a serious justice problem.

  2. Microsoft WORD? by JambisJubilee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was surprised when I heard this was related to Microsoft Word. Don't most lawyers use Wordperfect?

  3. Just a Guess by lyinhart · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Somebody probably sent one or more of the documents using the "Send to Mail Recipient for Review" feature. The feature seems to at least sometimes (perhaps depending on your e-mail client) set a custom property on the word file that makes annotations made by the Track Changes featire virtually impossible to delete. Thus exporting to PDF or something would have kept the printed annotations. So you'd have to turn off Track Changes and delete the Property manual.

    --
    Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
  4. Re:Insane!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm Portuguese too and I am not surprised at all. A couple of years ago, I was accused of an IT related crime. When I went to be heard by the judge, the first thing she tells me is: "I know nothing of computers, for me they are just typewriters".

    Then, under a pile of nerves, I had to explain to her what a server is, the meaning of uploading and downloading files, the difference between a website and a file hosted in a server, among several other basic stuff, dead worried that she would understand something wrong and recommend some jail time for me... Luckily, the charges were dropped later on.

    Judges learning LaTeX? Not gonna happen any time soon, I'm afraid...