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Judge Kimball Strikes SCO's Jury Trial Demand
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Sep 08, 2007 07:48 AM
from the down-on-their-luck dept.
from the down-on-their-luck dept.
watchingeyes writes "In a ruling on various pre-trial motions in limine and other, similar motions in the SCO vs Novell case, Judge Kimball today issued a ruling striking SCO's demand for a jury trial, ruling that Novell's claims seek equitable, and not legal relief. In addition, he denied SCO's request for entry of judgment that would allow them to appeal his ruling on the UNIX copyrights and Novell's waiver rights, ruling that if SCO wants to appeal any of his rulings, it can do them all at once after trial. He also granted Novell's request to voluntarily dismiss its own breach of contract claim, denied SCO's motion to exclude press coverage and evidence from the IBM case, granted Novell's motion in limine preventing SCO from contesting his summary judgment ruling at trial, granted Novell's second motion in limine preventing SCO from arguing that SCOsource licenses that license SVRx only incidentally aren't SVRx licenses, denied another SCO motion in limine which improperly asked the Judge to issue rulings on contractual issues and denied Novell's final motion in limine which sought to prevent SCO from contesting Novell's apportionment of royalties analysis. Looks like SCO will be facing a trial in-front of a judge which has already ruled against them numerous times."
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Interpretation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why'd you make me think of HK-47? (Score:2)
Fact: The meatbags deserve it.
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It was DIFFERENT SCO.
It was a company from Santa Cruz, California called "The Santa Cruz Operation". When their Unix business started to go downhill they sold it to Caldera - a company from Utah. The same Caldera that purchased DR-DOS and won Millions in a lawsuit from Microsoft.
After selling Unix business to Caldera The Santa Cruz Operation renamed itself to Tarantella and later on Caldera renamed itself to The SCO Group, Inc. and st
Re:Interpretation (Score:5, Informative)
You're probably thinking of the Santa Cruz Operation, not these bozos at Caldera doing business as The SCO Group, after they bought Santa Cruz's Unix business and Santa Cruz changed its name to Tarantella.
SCOG (The SCO Group aka Caldera) has deliberately blurred this distinction all along.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I remember further back than that
They dropped off a unit for us to play with at Olivetti--an XT. After waiting for minutes at the login, we all wandered off . . .
hawk
Poor, Poor SCO (Score:5, Funny)
Damnit, I can never get through that sentence without laughing.
Hang em out to dry, Your Honor.
- Scott
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No! (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't there some EPA regulation against this?
Parent
Re:Poor, Poor SCO (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure they do. They just need a case first.
Parent
Re:Poor, Poor SCO (Score:5, Informative)
So I do think SCO are treated fairly here.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
I am also aware that corporations are treated much like persons, and the amount in question certainly comes to more than $20, so why are they not guaranteed the right to trial by jury if they request it?
The answers I got when I asked about this last time (it was about people) was that someone could request a jury trial for civil matters, but they would have to pay huge court expenses. One argu
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They are.
Or is it a technical definition of the words common law that I am missing?
That's the problem. There were basically two systems of jurisprudence in the English/American common-law system, law and equity. They used to be two parallel systems, with their own tribunals ("judges" handled cases at law,
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Why, did they murder someone?
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Yea, themselves.
Re:Poor, Poor SCO (Score:4, Informative)
From what I can work out, they only need a jury to decide if there is a dispute about the "facts" or if Novell were asking for punative damages. It seems that for the claims made, no facts are disputed, and Novell dropped their claim for special damages. All that left are decisions about the Law, and Judge Kimball gets to do that without a jury.
The facts of the case are the contracts etc. Both sides agree on the text of those, but the interpretation is a legal one and thats down to JK.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Rowling?
SCO Wizard School: Ok children, watch closely as I wave my magic wand and *poof* watch all of that free cash roll in!
Oops.Misfire...
Re:Poor, Poor SCO (Score:4, Informative)
Almost,
They could insist on a jury if it were a matter of law, like punitive damages, but it is only matter of equity, that is, make me whole by payin what you owe. Novell dropped the punitive damages so they could avoid a jury. There still is a matter of fact in dispute, that is, how much of the Sun and MS licenses were SysV, for which SCOX must remit to Novell in full in return for a 5% fee, and how much were for other things, for which SCOX should not owe anything to Novell.
Parent
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SCO - the Monty Python Black Knight (Score:4, Funny)
"Aye, you chopped my legal legs off! No big deal! I can still hop! Have at you!"
english not good enough (Score:3, Insightful)
is this another nail on SCO's coffin, or several of them at the same time ?
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Heh. I don't think that even most people whose primary language is English could understand that. Especially since most legalese is Latin.
I believe this is several nails, however.
Re:english not good enough (Score:5, Informative)
For those not understanding what's going on: Kimball ruled that the copyrights on UNIX System V don't belong to SCO, they belong to Novell, because the Asset Purchase Agreement, signed between Novell and Santa Cruz never transferred the copyrights, just the business. Santa Cruz was to collect UNIX royalties for SVR5 for Novell and keep a portion for themselves in exchange. The SCO Group stopped paying Novell for UNIX sometime ago, and Novell wants its money.
Now if SCO doesn't own the UNIX copyrights, then how can they sue IBM? The answer is, they can't, especially since Novell told them they can't. Now SCO wants to appeal this decision before the Novell trial is over so they can still sue IBM. And they want any evidence from the IBM trial to not be used in the Novell trial (they filed a similar motion in the IBM trial). And Kimball said "No, and no."
In short: SCO is screwed. After Novell is through with them, if anything is left, IBM will launch its Lanham Act claims against SCO and there will be a smokin' hole in Linden, Utah, where SCO HQ used to be.
Parent
Re:english not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to see them go and pierce the "corporate veil" and go after the source of the money SCO used to bankroll the lawsui^H^H^H^H^H^Hscam... I want to know who the real "PIPE Fairy" is... we all suspect Microsoft, but I want to see hard evidence that can be used against Microsoft.
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My understanding as that they were to collect UNIX royalties for Novell and hand them all to Novell *then* Novell would pay them their cut. (Which of course they never did, so Novell is demanding *all* royalties ever collected by SCO.)
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Actually they can, and might, still sue IBM over breach of contract. They have waffled back and forth in the IBM case over whether they were suing about copyright or contract issues. Lately they've been saying that the IBM suit is about contracts. Unfortunately most of the breach of contract they're alleging have to do with copyrights and trade secrets, which will be much harder to sue over if Novell owns the copyrights.
Don't be supr
Why Novell didn't transfer the copyrights (Score:2)
For those not understanding what's going on: Kimball ruled that the copyrights on UNIX System V don't belong to SCO, they belong to Novell, because the Asset Purchase Agreement, signed between Novell and Santa Cruz never transferred the copyrights, just the business.
Right. That issue was examined during discovery. SCO wanted the copyrights transferred when they bought the UNIX business, but Novell insisted on full payment before transferring the copyrights. SCO couldn't come up with the up-front cash,
Re:english not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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SCO has been allowed to cause uncountable damage to Linux and an equivalent benefit to Microsoft for the past three years.
That's thirty billion dollars of income for Microsoft, protected from competition in part by FUD generated by SCO. They have NEVER had a credible case, but they have been allowed to slander the closest competition Microsoft has for three years. Only now does it look like they'll be forced to stop the slander.
And their punishment? We don't know yet, but it looks
Re:english not good enough (Score:5, Informative)
"equitable relief" == court-ordered restitution of property, as opposed to fines and punishments. Suing someone to enforce a contract they signed or pay back money they owe you is equitable relief, as opposed to suing them for punitive damages, which is a legal matter. The relevancy here is that equitable matters don't warrant a jury trial, whereas legal ones do.
"waiver" == A formal way of stating that you, or someone acting on your behalf, will not enforce one of your (or their) rights. In this case, Novell issued a waiver on behalf of SCO over whatever it was that SCO was suing IBM over (Normally you can't waive someone else's rights like this, but SCO signed a contract that allowed Novell to do just that)
"dismiss" == to throw a court claim out and not hear it.
"summary judgment" == A judgement on a claim instead of an actual trial, because there was no disputed evidence to hear, so the Judge could rule on it immediately.
It's bad for SCO, this ruling; it doesn't get to bamboozle a fresh naïve jury but instead gets one of the two judges they've been irritating for the past 4 years, so that's it's next-to-last hope for a favourable ruling out the window. The only ray of hope is that it might be able to use some new evidence out to show that whatever Microsoft and Sun paid for wasn't the stuff that Novell was recently ruled to have owned. But it'll be fighting against it's own public statements and anything it's said in other courtrooms, so it's chances are slimmer than slim...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Worse than that; remember that Judge Kimball is presiding over both the SCO/Novell and SCO/IBM cases. So SCO can't even try to pull a, "This is what the Novell judge really meant," bamboozle on the IBM judge, as they've tried to do with the Autozone and Red Hat cases i
Re: (Score:2)
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Waste, nothing but waste (Score:2)
"Drag lawyers?" (Score:2)
Well ... your alternative is ? (Score:2, Interesting)
(a) the constitution (just think of the PATRIOT act and other legal shenennigans by the current administration)
(b) individual freedom (versus the government)
(c) individual rights (versus the government and any other body that wields large amounts of power such as large corporations).
And yes, a large amount of time, care, money and attention is needed to adjudicate the conflicting claims and counterclaims. However I personally believe th
One-armed man (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the most important remaining issue (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO's problem is that they basically told the SEC that all the money belongs to Novell. SCO tried to have that evidence excluded but failed.
It is likely that Novell will get more than 50% of the money. The judge will grant a constructive trust. SCO will be immediately bankrupt. The trustee will march in and kick the current SCO management out. The trustee will agree to anything the creditors (IBM, Novell mainly) tell him. The cases will end immediately.
AllParadox, a retired lawyer who has been following the case closely, predicts that Judge K. will issue an order sanctioning SCO's lawyers. Some of them could end up being disbarred. It will serve them right. This case has been an incredible misuse of the courts.
Re:Maybe the most important remaining issue (Score:5, Insightful)
One can only hope, but this is very unlikely. The legal system is loathe to expel their own - when judge Susan Chrzanowski was caught having an affair with a defense attorney who was a) pleading cases before her b) given a virtual monopoly on court-appointed indigent cases, c) murdered his wife the day after having yet another sexual rendezvous with the judge and the judge was caught in several lies regarding her involvement her only punishment was 17 months paid "vacation" (they called it a suspension, but she collected around $200,000 and full benefits), six months unpaid leave, and instead of being disbarred was allowed to return to the bench. Retired state justice Charles Levin who oversaw Susan's review originally ruled that she had done nothing whatsoever that merited punishment.
If cases like this don't merit any punishment from the ranks of the legal system, why would a couple of lawyers playing hardball in a case that most americans don't understand or care about be prohibited from paying more dues to the various lawyer associations?
Parent
Re:Here's an example (Score:4, Insightful)
I have my own personal feelings here - not only should the lawyers be kicked out but their masters should be personally punished. If your dog bites somebody on your command then you'd better believe that you'll face the music. If you are a corporate exec who issues the sic 'em command to your lawyer then you had better be ready to face the music. Personally.
But my personal thoughts are irrelevant, and these lawyers are likely to get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. In fact, in Michigan (and probably many other states) a lawyer is held responsible if he doesn't pursue a case to the utmost, and bringing about frivolous charges are just part of the game. How many cases are filed alleging racial discrimination where there is clearly zero evidence, let alone plausibility that it ever happened? Those lawyers are never punished for making false allegations, if the charges don't stick then all of the lawyers and judges say "oh well, no harm in trying".
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
True, but the actual winner is Microsoft. They ought to be punished. They brought home tens of billions of business through the uncertainties surrounding the case. And I am positive they knew it. And I bet they encouraged it on purpose, on this purpose.
Of course, McBride must have his gooleys cut off,
Re: (Score:2)
Is the number allowed to be some percentage? I thought that SCO had claimed it was "100% theirs or nothing", hence Novell being rather happy they could prove it wasn't 100% (and asking for "no new theories of apportionment to be conjured-up at the last minute, please")
justice (Score:4, Funny)
LamLaw Quote (Score:2)
The Darl McBride response (Score:3, Insightful)
We absolutely and fundamentally believe we are right in this case, and we believe in the justice system. But we also know that things don't always happen the way they're supposed to, and we're realistic about that point.
And this gem is fascinating as well:
Let's call a spade a spade: We just took a literal pounding. We got knocked down -- there is no doubt about it. This is not a good ruling for us. But it's not the end of the line of the legal battle. In fact, there's some very encouraging things that came out of even this ruling. And we will continue to fight on those fronts.
Original article here [computerworld.com]
I can only guess that the "encouraging thing" he is speaking about has to be that Kimball ruled that they own their own derivitive works of UnixWare. However these are facts were never in question. At this point we can expect SCO to argue that the M$ and Sun licenses were SCOsource licenses and not SVR4 UNIX. Good luck with that since I believe they have made conflicting public statements about that in the past as well.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean an Altair? Oh hell yes I'd like one. I tried to buy one back in the day, but couldn't get enough cash together.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I wanted the heathkit with the 4004.
Instead, ended up years a few later with some CoCos.