SCO Denied Again In Court

CDWalton writes "Groklaw has the latest in the SCO v. IBM case. Judge Wells denied SCO the opportunity to get depositions from involved parties after the date she had specified as the cutoff for those activities." From the article: "Brent Hatch started out talking about the request to take the depositions of Intel, Oracle, and The Open Group. Judge Wells brought up her October 12, 2005 order and said that depositions MUST be completed by the cutoff date. That any that cannot be taken by that date must be forgone. Brent stated that they properly noticed the depositions before the cutoff date and that they were not taken for reasons outside his, or his client's, control ... Judge Wells asked if the subpeonas were defective in some manner. Hatch: Yes, they were."

Just a reminder....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

that Groklaw cheerfully accepts donations. PJ, we are not worthy.

Re:Why do cases take long?

[FatRatBastard]

For just the reasons laid out in the story: SCO have been dragging their feet every step of the way.

Re:Why do cases take long?

[temojen]

Asside from the fact that judges work on several cases at the same time, so they have to schedule things, there are HUGE amounts of documents involved in a case like this.

Re:Why do cases take long?

[TubeSteak]

Cases like SCO v IBM take such a very long time to resolve for several reasons.

1. The case is complicated. They're dealing with a web of contracts and code dating back decades.

2. Judges give everyone lots of time for *discovery* to minimize opportunities for appealing the decision later on. It'd be a massive waste if they spent years litigating a case, only to get it overturned during appeal because of something that would have only added a week to the discovery process.

3. IBM hasn't been pushing for an accelerated time table because of #2. IBm, like the Judge, doesn't want to win & then have to spend another 10 years in Appeals Courts.

So... no, I don't think you can blame inefficiencies. Or if there are inefficiencies, they are left in place in order to avoid greater inefficiencies.

SCO's lawyers have fucked up this case in so many ways that the Judge is beginning to seriously lose patience. I'm actually quite amazed that the Judge has given them so much slack up till this point.

Re:What I find interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

> Somebody is probably making big bucks buying and selling every few days.

Yeah, they're called brokers.

Seriously though, SCO's stock is so thinly traded, there's probably more IBM stock given as gifts every day than SCO ever moves in a week. All that's happening is a slow leak as the directors of SCO make their regular scheduled sales (they aren't buying their own stock, no sir) and those sales just end up in the hands of institutional investors who are keeping them on the minus side of a hedge (hedge fund logic is weird) or other cronies of McBride & Yarro. SCO's stock movement isn't even a tempest in a teapot. More like lukewarm brownian motion.

They do however enjoy the highest short ratio on Wall Street. If they get hit with a short squeeze, it will take something like *weeks* of trading just to cover the shorts... at which point if IBM decides that buying out SCO might offer the greatest insult-to-injury potential (who says corporations don't feel spite?) they might offer a shiny new nickel to cover them all and make SCOX go away forever.

IANAPI (I Am Not a Professional Investor), I just play one on Slashdot :)

SCO teleconference Monday - call in and listen

[Animats]

SCO is having a teleconference [yahoo.com] at noon Eastern time on Monday, February 27, 2006. That's when they get to explain this latest loss to analysts. This should be entertaining.

Toll Free within North America: [phone]
Toll call: [phone]
Passcode to enter call: 7134691

Re:So wait... wait

[mck9]

The events beyond SCO's control were that the parties failed to respond as requested to subpoenas that were vague, overbroad, contradictory, untimely, fatally defective in various other procedural respects, and hence not binding on anyone.

However Judge Wells said that the subpoenas would have been untimely even if they had been flawless in other respects. The supoenaed parties would not have had time to respond appropriately.

Or as Linus put it once: even in some alternate universe in which SCO were right, they'd still be wrong.

Re:Why do cases take long?

[gvc]

IBM dropped the patent claims nearly a year ago, so as to expedite the case.

IBM also file several summary judgement motions and the court told them to stop doing that until after discovery.

I don't think you can say that IBM is dragging this out.

Re:Why do cases take long?

[DietFluffy]

In-house lawyers (all large corporations use them) are not paid by the hour.

Re:IANAL, so......

[mck9]

Judge Wells had set a deadline for the close of discovery, i.e. the process whereby the litigants can ask each other -- or third parties -- for disclosures of information via documents, depositions, and the like. There are certain exception to this deadline but they don't apply here.

SCO waited till the last minute to subpoena Intel, Oracle, and The Open Group, demanding that they provide witnesses for depositions. Besides being needlessly delayed, these subpoenas were procedurally defective in almost every way imaginable.

Naturally, the subpoenaed parties didn't show up for the scheduled depositions. That gave SCO an excuse to whine to the judge that they needed more time to do their depositions, because those other companies were misbehaving.

The judge's reply was, in essence: If you wanted to depose these people, you should have done it sooner, and you should have done it right. I gave you a deadline, I meant what I said, and now your time is up. You'll just have to do without those depositions.

Re:What I find interesting

[dmbrun]

Well no.

The trouble is that so many people bought SCO stock - shorted is the correct term in this case - in the expectation that it would be worthless in the future and they would make a killing. This hasn't happened, the case is still going and SCO are still in existent, so that the buyers are having to front up with the cash to cover the shorts. This explains the price.

Try this link, SCO is briefly mentioned.

linkhttp://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2005/comme ntary05080403.htm?source=eptyholnk303100&logvisit= y&npu=y&bounce=y&bounce2=y [fool.com]

You are incorrect.

[schon]

SCO has so far not been asked to make a specific accusation yet for gods sake.

You are incorrect. SCOX has been not only been "asked", but they have beeb ORDERED to specify what their allegations are, on *THREE* separate occasions. They've failed to do so (while claiming they have) each and every time.

The last time they did it, they filed everything under seal, so that nobody besides IBM can point out that they've failed again (and yes, IBM has pointed it out to the court - out of the 294 items that SCOX filed, IBM has said that only one (yes, *ONE*) is "specific" enough for the court, but that one doesn't actually identify anything that IBM did.

Why hasn't anybody asked SCO what bits of unix they own, what pieces SCO alleges Ibm stole.

Again, they did (and not just "asked", but *ordered*, by a federal judge.)

They still haven't said what IBM stole form them.

This bit is correct, but that doesn't mean that nobody has "asked".

Re:Why do cases take long?

[DietFluffy]

i take that back, in this case both ibm and sco are being represented by ouside firms

Not quite... Re:IANAL, so......

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave you a deadline, I meant what I said, and now your time is up. You'll just have to do without those depositions.

Not quite. They're not being forced to proceed without the depositions. The judge gave them the opportunity to renew:

Judge Wells returns from chambers about five minutes later. She says that she will deny SCO's motion to compel without predjudice. That SCO has 30 days to renew and MUST clearly and narrowly define documents required.

Re:You are incorrect.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Appeal is almost always granted"
Wow. As an attorney, I find that rather amusing. You have an appeal as a matter of right in most US jurisdictions...but they are discretionary appeals. The court more often than not (reead: about 90% of the time) decline to review the case. Of those that a) get to the court and b) are miraculously reversed (also rare), I'd say about 2% are accepted on cert to the supremes.

And remember, you can't appeal just because you feel bad about the outcome. You have to bring up mistakes of law, material procedural errors, and so forth.