Portions of SCO's Expert Reports Stricken 170
rm69990 writes "A day after Judge Dale Kimball reaffirmed Judge Wells' order tossing most of SCO's case, Judge Wells has stricken large portions of SCO's expert reports, stating that SCO was trying to do an end-run around IBM. As IBM put it in its motion papers, SCO will not be allowed to 'litigate by ambush.' This motion was regarding SCO's expert reports, where SCO attempted to insert new evidence after discovery had ended via their expert reports. Wells' ruled directly from the bench, and finished by telling SCO to 'take it up with Judge Kimball' if they had a problem. This really hasn't been a good week for SCO."
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Still, that deadline was about three and a half years into the case, it's not exactly been fast. And they're the plaintiffs, not the defendants - aren't they supposed to know what their actual claims are _before_ sueing somebody?
Eventually there has to be a deadline. SCO decides to sneak in some extra, really vague claims after that in hopes that IBM didn't have time to organize a proper defence, but well, they've had far too many deadline extensions already. Final means final.
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:3, Insightful)
That wasn't an analogy. That was an argument.
You haven't been paying attention. SCO has spent the past few years jiggering the deadlines and what they file when with regards to them. They aren't the victim here; here too they are the villian and both IBM and the judge are just getting plenty sick and tired of their overt; and abusive, legal gaming.
KFG
Re:This has been going on for years (Score:5, Insightful)
You're rigth, SCO is *still* after several years trying to add more evidence and more claims. By having expert-testimony (which is supposed to *explain* the claims and the evidence) contain claims that aren't there in the final disposition.
So, ok, SCO still, after being ordered repeatedly to put all the evidence on the table for literally *years* don't have all the evidence they claim to posess on the table.
But worse: They also *still* don't want to commit to exactly what it is that they are even *claiming* that IBM did.
In effect, several years after the trial started, SCO is still at: "You did something wrong, but we refuse to state in specific terms *what* you did wrong, we also refuse to provide any evidence that you *did* infact do the things we claim."
It's impossible to defend oneself if one doesn't even know precisely what the accusations are. "Structure and organization" ain't specific. No more than "breaking some law" would be.
It's beyond ridicolous. They've been given enough rope at this point. It's nice to see the judges are starting to tigthen up -- this particular attempt at redefinind the claims was turned down flat.
Re:This has been going on for years (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM's goal is probably either to get SCO to drop, get the judge to drop,
or failing that to settle for as little as possible while retaining the
right to continue to do business as usual.
IBM doesn't want to settle - they want to leave a smoking crator to be an example for the next idiot that tries to scam them.
Re:UnixWare and OpenServer: the real victims here. (Score:5, Insightful)
We recently moved our main transaction processing server to Suse Linux from Unixware. (yeah, I know, evil deal with M$ doesn't mean anything in this company) The difference is astounding! They actually found bottlenecks that were undetectable before, due to the inefficiency of Unixware, and many of the memory leaks vanished. As well, the same hardware that would have have only lasted maybe 6 month to a year under Unixware, will now serve us for a few more years yet.
I'd say that Unixware needs to be burned, pissed on, and burned again, then pissed on again for the piece of shit that it really is. You'd be hard pressed to convince me that Linux, in anyway, would be benefited by copying code from any SCO product.
Re:Even Microsoft dropped SCO (Score:5, Insightful)
When a land mine explodes, you don't consider the mine a failure because it was destroyed in the process.
SCO's strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
An example of something that could be decided as a matter of law would be whether Novell transferred any copyrights to Santa Cruz and whether they then passed on to SCO. The judge could simply read the contracts and rule that the ownership of the copyrights had not changed hands; no need for a jury.
SCO's only hope is to get their case in front of a jury and that hope is based on being able to confuse the jury and get a verdict that they don't deserve.
When discovery closed, SCO had not dredged up anything that could serve as a disputed fact. What they did put before the court was mostly pitched out by Judge Wells because it was not nearly specific enough. It was like: Shop keeper "He stole something from my store."
Cop "What did he steal?"
Shop keeper "Something; it was in the catalog."
Cop "How do you know he stole it?"
Shop keeper "He was in the same city."
If you haven't been following this sorry mess, you'll think the above scenario is exaggerated. It isn't.
In order to get something past the judges and before the jury SCO tried to sneak some stuff in via the expert reports. Unlike the rest of us (who have to stick to facts), experts are allowed to give opinions to the court. SCO was hoping that they could sneak in some opinions that would make it look like there were some disputed facts. Then they would get their jury trial.
Notice also the judges' strategy. They aren't allowed to tell SCO that they are full of crap. They have to assume that SCO is acting in good faith. Thus, when judge Wells threw out most of SCO's evidence, she did it on the basis that they willfully withheld evidence. They said they had evidence and they didn't present it so they must have withheld it. Of course, we all know that SCO never had any evidence. Similarly, we know that the expert reports were just embarassingly bad. I feel sorry for the experts.
Re:Maybe a partial answer why SCOX must keep tryin (Score:3, Insightful)
It's IBM's policy not to settle (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM is a big rich target, and there are entirely too many people whose sole business plan is frivolous litigation. And anyone with lots of money is a natural target. It's like putting a sign on your porch saying "I have a big pile of gold in my basement". Someone will take it as a personal challenge to take it from you. And if you give in to the first guy who comes over and says "I'll sue you if you don't give me some of that gold", tomorrow you'll find a big queue of people at your door who want some too. It's not a precedent you want to set.
So settling frivolous claims is _not_ what IBM wants, and it's never been what it wanted. What it wants is the equivalent of a bunch of skulls on spikes, with a sign saying "these are the last guys who tried to extort us."
And I have to wonder what have Darl and the gang been thinking. It's been common knowledge for ages, complete with such mental images like "IBM's lawyers are like the Nazgul" or "IBM can darken the sky with its lawyers". So I can't really imagine someone genuinely thinking, "I know! surely one more try is all it takes! They'll certainly do the stupid thing _this_ time!"
Even assuming that Darl were actually _that_ stupid and disconnected from reality, you have to wonder about everyone else involved. Like the investors that funded this stupid charge of the light brigade. What were _those_ thinking?
Cue conspiracy theories about MS paying off Darl to create FUD even if SCO loses the lawsuit.
Then again, maybe Hanlon's Razor does apply, after all: Never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fairness problem is that if the plaintiff can add new claims at anytime he pleases, he can move the goal posts at will whenver the defendant gets close to them, at little cost to himself and great cost to the defendant. Successful defense would become impossible; either you'd lose outright, or be forced to settle on terms favorable to the plaintiff.
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Others see success, I only see failure (Score:2, Insightful)
Knock, knock: here is reality (Score:4, Insightful)
- most likely, there will be NO people going to jail. Just because YOU have a vested interest does not make this case any different from 1 megacorp suing another
- lawyers are NEVER punished for trying a case on someone else's behalf (as long as they don't do anything actually illegal). this case is not anywhere near as emotionally charged as the trial of Ted bundy, Timothy McVeigh, or that hijacker that did not -factually- hijack a plane.
- lawyers like SCO's generally have more than enough work offers, and they charge more per hour than I per day, and I am an expensive consultant. The fact that they represented SCO does not hurt them in the least.
- the fact that SCO gets beaten at every turn is NO a fault of their lawyers. SCO has a shitty case, and the lawyers have to work with what they got. they do the best they can, and they should. you'd expect the same from your lawyer, no?
In a far more realistic scenario
- IBM takes this all the way and SCO loses big.
- IBM's counter claims will maybe turn out in their advantage, but maybe not.
- SCO will try to appeal, but this will most likely not have a result because -unlike you- the judges involved kept their cool and did everything by the book, no matter how trivial and dull the issue at hand.
- SCO will dwindle away and die. Not because they are evil, but simpy because they alienated their remaining customers, did not invest in developing new technology, and have a gigantic lawyer bill to pay. The latter largely because the SCO lawyers had sense enough to demand payment, instead of a large percentage of a possible settlement.
Re:This has been going on for years (Score:1, Insightful)
SCO and Confusion (Score:2, Insightful)
Each day that this drags out is one more day for them to confuse their stories, forget facts, change facts entirely, build up judge resentment, and basically undermine their case. Here is hoping that IBM does leave them a smoking crater, and then provides the blueprint for success to others who might be targets for such lawsuits. (Novell-MS vs Red Hat comes to mind.)
Not likely (Score:3, Insightful)
Note, I'm not a lawyer. This is all the reading I get from Groklaw [groklaw.net], which has been following the case since the beginning. If you don't frequent Groklaw, you might want to, if you are interested in the SCO case at all.
Re:Total hypo, but what if you were SCO? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps both drivers are based on the same sample implementation provided by the Ethernet board maker?
Or from the same specification document file? It's rare to see a device driver written completely from scratch. More often than not, there is always some form of template/empty framework that is used, either by using a generic null driver, or by scooping out the contents of an existing driver.
Though, companies usually require staff to reference where particular blocks of source code have come from
(register specifications.