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

Posted by BeauHD on from the holiday-spirit dept.

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."

5 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Discovery Disputes by nomadic · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  2. yeah right by sit1963nz · · Score: 2

    "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.

    1. Re:yeah right by CrashNBrn · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    2. Re: yeah right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    3. Re: yeah right by stabiesoft · · Score: 2

      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.