Judge Blasts Waymo V. Uber Lawyers, Delays Trial Until December (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The federal judge presiding in the Waymo v. Uber lawsuit has delayed trial for another two months after castigating lawyers on both sides of the case for being dishonest and telling "half-truths." "I'm going to give you a schedule, and we're not going to argue about it," U.S. District Judge William Alsup said after a one-hour hearing today. "We're going to pick the jury on November 29. We will start the trial on December 4, and it will run until December 20." The trial will decide whether Uber has misappropriated trade secrets from Waymo, Google's self-driving car spinoff.

Over the course of a 90-minute hearing today, the two sides had a heated dispute over what documents were produced and when depositions happened. Waymo lawyer Charles Verhoeven said that tens of thousands of documents were only handed over after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently ruled that Uber must hand over the "due diligence" report produced by Stroz Friedberg. "To say that this volume is surprising is an understatement," said Verhoeven. "It's shocking. It's unbelievable."

Comments

Discovery Disputes

[Anonymous Coward]

Discovery disputes like this arise because judges find discovery disputes stupid. Mostly because discovery disputes are stupid. (You are incentivizing two sets of lawyers to behave as badly as they can get away with, so they do so because of how much money is at stake.)

It is pretty much universally agreed that courts should come down hard on parties that act unreasonably in discovery, and also that courts will not do that because judges find it too annoying to deal with the squabbling.

Re:Discovery Disputes

[nomadic]

Depending on the case discovery disputes ARE the case. I worked for a plaintiffs'-side law firm that got into epic discovery battles (as in more than once they made the national legal news media) and we really did go after documents intensely because a single document or two could have made the difference between winning and losing a multimillion dollar case. It wasn't about trying to pressure the other side or punish them.

On the other hand I totally agree that judges tend not to care about them.

Liars Poker

[Templer421]

Is there a single trustworthy person at Uber?

Re:Liars Poker

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a single trustworthy person at Uber?

There occasionally have been. They left after a few hours when the stench became unbearable.

Re:Liars Poker

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read it, it looks like this is mostly Levandowski's fault. Uber doesn't appear to have used the patents or other materials from him, the worst they did is that their lawyers tried to cover for him to protect Uber once this came to light.

Judge must be new around here

[Anonymous Coward]

castigating lawyers on both sides of the case for being dishonest and telling "half-truths."

When isn't that the case?

yeah right

[sit1963nz]

"To say that this volume is surprising is an understatement,"

Yeah bollocks, it's standard practice to try and swamp the opposition with huge volumes of paperwork in the hope that they will miss something important in amongst the irrelevant crap they pushed your way.

And then its also standard practice to complain about this, try and delay proceeding and maximize the billable hours that eventually gets put onto the end consumer as a price increase.

Re:yeah right

[CrashNBrn]

Uber waited until the last day to produce the documents they were told to by Alsup. Then they waited until another court ruled against them to force them to produce the "due diligence" report that Alsup demanded they hand over. And again, they released that to the opposing side a few days before trial was set to begin.

So while it's definitely standard practice to swamp the other side with paperwork, it's also standard practice to produce the required documents in a timely manner, and not drag your heels until it's even past the deadline that Alsup set for discovery.

Re: yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Alsup was the one that handled Oracle v Google and learned Java just so he could try the case.

I have a feeling Uber is going to ultimately go out of business as a result of this case as Alsup and the Jury will slam the shit out of them based upon the facts.

Re: yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Google will surely swoop in during the bankruptcy proceedings to pick the pieces off the carcas. I mean *cough* customer database / rides history

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that the phrase is "try to" do something, not "try and"? "Try and" makes no sense.

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that's how it's used in the real world. Try and tell me otherwise!

Re:yeah right

[dj245]

"To say that this volume is surprising is an understatement," Yeah bollocks, it's standard practice to try and swamp the opposition with huge volumes of paperwork in the hope that they will miss something important in amongst the irrelevant crap they pushed your way. And then its also standard practice to complain about this, try and delay proceeding and maximize the billable hours that eventually gets put onto the end consumer as a price increase.

In my experience (technical/commercial disputes relating to large projects, but not yet a lawsuit), examining the pile of documents for what should have been included, but wasn't, is usually the real golden nugget. There may be more of a compulsion to not forget the key document in actual legal cases.

Re: yeah right

[stabiesoft]

I was involved in a different case with Alsup, and yes, uber should be very worried. He is a very competent judge when it comes to tech. And if I was the lawyers, I'd take him seriously. He will sanction them.

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

It's normal to come out with docs on the last day. It's also normal for there to be complains in discovery about this.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully nothing broke so the deadline is met.

Film at 11

[Hognoxious]

castigating lawyers on both sides of the case for being dishonest and telling "half-truths."

Later he went to the zoo and, after telling the lions to stop growling, he was asked to leave for chanting "Hey fatty big nose!" in front of the elephant enclosure.

brands

[mapkinase]

Why is it that every single post in social media about self driving cars is about some brand?

I want actually to learn about new technological concepts in self driving cars, networking, software modeling (one can develop fully functional software for self driving cars right now without waiting for technological polishing of the hardware, especially high level - network operations - where is all that in the news?)

Screw ads, screw marketing.

Re:brands

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to read technical articles but all I see in the media aimed at the mass market is mass marketing! wah!
read a journal, nerd.

90 minutes in an hour?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when are there 90 minutes in an hour? Great job editors, can't even get the summary correct.

Judge William Alsup said after a one-hour hearing today...
Over the course of a 90-minute hearing today...

Standard brinkmanship, but don't fall off the edge

[OmniGeek]

And it's ALWAYS a bad idea to piss off the judge, especially one as sharp as Judge Alsup. From the Ars Technica article:

"Well, you only need three of the lawyers over there to try this case," Alsup said, gesturing to Uber's table full of attorneys. "We will miss you greatly. I was looking forward to seeing you perform in this case. But next time, maybe you ought to produce the documents."

If you haven't read the article on the due diligence report Uber was forced to cough up, it's worthwhile. "Bombshell" doesn't cover it by half. That report is probably enough by itself to convict Uber, and probably send Levandowski to Club Fed for obstruction of justice by destroying evidence after being informed it was wanted in an investigation.

Alsup is my Favorite Judge!

[Anonymous Coward]

#2 is Judge Judy