mtria

IANAL, but on the face of what happened here, this appears to be an outrageous outcome. That said, not only am I not an attorney, but I haven't read the transcript. It is not difficult to ridicule any complex process by reducing it to a few sentences. So while I have an opinion, I also recognize that the opinion is formed on the basis of minimal information, and also on the concerns that I have for what the consequences to my hobby will be.

To Patrick McCombe, if you are anot an attorney, you have my awe at your willingness to read through 1200 pages of transcript. I have never managed more than 200 pages on any one hearing myself, and suffered a splitting headache thereafter.

We would all like to think that the law is about justice, but that is only an ideal. The law is more about providing the minimal code of conduct required in our dealings with one another. From that viewpoint, the continuity and expectations of behavior that precedence provide for, are often seen as a greater good than justice. As a society there is an enormous need to know what we owe each other. In any case, as problematic as some individual decisions may be, courts of law are a better solution than trial by armed combat.

In general the civil jury is to decide a case based on a criteria of 50+% probability of who owes what to whom. So even if a jury performs all its determinations and calculations properly, that decision point may still result in up to 49.99+% incorrect verdicts. We can all wish it were otherwise.

Cries for civil tort reform abound every time there is some case where the verdict is either ridiculous, or appears to be ridiculous. I suspect that it is more often the appearance than the fact. The overwhelming majority of civil cases, in some states as high as 90%, are business v business rather than involving individuals. Some of these suits make the one against Ryobi look sane. Some of them do far more damage, both collateral and direct to individuals and corporations than any personal suit has ever done.

I have been watching one intellectual property case that has plagued an entire community made up of millions, as well as a number of large corporations and mega-corporations for seven years. Amongst other issues, the plaintiff claimed it had proof of millions of lines of copyright infringing computer code on software it did not own the copyrights to. In the end they couldn't demonstrate even one line of infringing code even if they had owned the copyrights. Given the legal requirements for copyright ownership, the plaintiffs knew, or should have known, that they didn't own the code. I don't understand why the plaintiffs attorneys have not been disbarred, or the plaintiffs themselves are not in some deep hole for perpetrating fraud on the court.

Is the above case wrong? Absolutely! I have followed it in enough detail to have a respectable opinion on the matter. Should the plaintiffs have been barred from bringing the case -- no. Should it have been dispatched more quickly -- yes, seven years were far too long. But just because something has a bad outcome doesn't mean the process is wrong.

IANAL so my opinions are illegal