Did SCO Get Linux-mob Justice?

An anonymous reader writes "According to Fortune's legal blogger Roger Parloff, "once in awhile a judicial ruling comes down that's so wrong at such a basic level that you're just left scratching your head". He claims that Judge Kimball's "102-page ruling (about SCO) was greeted with widespread rejoicing and I-told-you-so's", but "the problem is not that Judge Kimball's view of the facts is wrong". Was the ruling unfair?"

No.

[Scareduck]

His hyperventilation amounts to ignoring SCO's inflated claims of ownership to everything, failure to prove they owned what they claimed -- which, by the way, they were never able to show in court what it was that they claimed they owned! This is legal wankery at its lowest, folks. Nothing to see here. Move on.

Some bad reasoning behind a good call (maybe)

[ProteusQ]

That's my understanding of the article. It has more to say to law students than FOSS advocates. The title, however, is inflammatory, probably just to make us read it.

No A$$hole Rule

[vinn]

Anyone ever hear of the book "No Asshole Rule"? It applies to hiring and firing staff (and if you're a manager you should probably browse through it.) On a real gut level I think corporations should abide by the ideas in that book. If you can't play nice in the playground with the other kids, you deserve to get your face punched in. Similarly, if you build your business on open source software, you play nice by going to the software developers and saying, "We think you're infringing this IP.. can you work with us to fix that?" If you wanna be the asshole that goes around suing everyone, blatantly lying to the press, and tell Wall Street another set of lies then you deserve to file bankruptcy.

Yodeling

[Roadmaster]

It looks as if this guy believes the judge plainly shouldn't have ruled on the issues he did. I think he should put his money where his mouth is and, pro-bono, file an appeal on SCO's behalf reverting Kimball's decision and repeating the entire 5-year process. My guess is he won't; a good way to generate buzz about your writings is to be on the opposing side of a losing argument, and doing your best to confound things and give reasonings as to why everybody else (against SCO) is wrong. I believe this behavior is known in certain circles as "trolling". That, folks, is why everybody hates lawyers; they just complicate things and can make a problem many times worse, all while taking 5 years to do it.

Article date: September 10, 2007, 6:14 am

[Anonymous Coward]

• That blog article is almost three months old: September 2007.
• That blog article has a provocative title but little substance.
• That blog article is horribly biased.
• That blog article claims that Judge Kimball did not know what he was talking about (especially regarding the APA), while he was praised by others (who are not part of the "Linux-mob") for this deep analysis of the facts.

That blog article is just old FUD.

Re:How?

[oahazmatt]

How can it be unfair when THEY were the ones at fault? When THEY were the ones lying and making false claims? Whatever they get now is perfectly fair game.

Contrary to how the US Justice System is viewed today, despite the actions of any party accused or convicted of wrong-doing, there is a widely-held belief that party should be judged with objectively and conviction be dealt without malicious intent or a decision be made against the party based on personal opinion.

Why Are People Angry At The Author?

[M$ Mole]

He actually makes a good point. From a legal standpoint, the judge (most likely) should not have granted Novell's motion for a summary judgment. The judge (probably) should have let the matter go to trial. From a "rules of the bench/bar" standpoint, the author is probably correct.

Heck, he even allows that the RESULT of the ruling is most likely correct, but the act of the ruling itself is the issue.

"Mob justice" Good grief!

[dogsbreath]

SCO has had several years in court and nothing that they have come up with in terms of a legal theory to support their position has had any lift to it. This is hardly "mob justice". If anything, there should be complaints that Judge K give them too much slack.

It is about time that the slow turning wheels of justice move to end the long suffering of IBM, Novell, the linux community, and open source in general.

Corporate Juries

[Doc Ruby]

How is that "accused's right to a jury of their peers" supposed to work when a corporation like SCO is accused? Is it supposed to be composed of CEOs, or board members, or representatives of other corporations whose execs and directors vote on the testimony?

That one flaw shows what a farce it is to treat corporations as "persons" with the same rights as humans. As if there were any shortage of reasons. Like this corporate flackery from _Fortune_'s Parloff, which is whining that a judge didn't waste even more years, time of people in juries and elsewhere in the legal system already overworked subsidizing corporate warfare like SCO's desperate, doomed extortion of IBM.

Somebody walk me through this...

[greenguy]

Judge Kimball is a "Linux-mob?"

I stopped RTFA after first paragraph.

[weave]

"... effectively dooming most of SCO's claims in closely related cases against IBM Corp. (IBM), AutoZone (AZO), and Red Hat (RHT), too "

Er, idiot, Redhat sued SCO, not visa-versa.

If he can't understand the difference between plaintiff and defendant, why should I consider any of his other opinions?

Fortune's headlines are even worse than /.'s

[Per Abrahamsen]

Neither "Linux" not "mob" is mentioned anywhere in the article, except for the headline.

The article is about the Novell vs SCO case, it advocate well that the issue of ownership is UNIX(TM) is far from clear cut, and leaps to the conclusion that it should have been decided by a jury rather than by a judge.

A jury is *closer* to to "mob-justice" than a judge, and Linux is rather irrelevant to the question of ownership of UNIX(TM), the headline makes no sense.

Was the headline selected by someone else than the author? Does Fortune get significant money from click hits? If so, maybe an editor chosed the headline to infuriate the Linux "mob".

Re:No.

[thewiz]

Actually, the reason this wasn't mob justice is because we didn't use our torches and pitchforks.

Re:Since when?...

[trolltalk.com]

I'm just amazed at how many supposedly-knowledgeable people continue to fall for what is utter BS. Anyone reading the comments posted to the article within hours of its' first appearance would have seen the whole thing torn apart - in particular, the legal requirement for a transfer of copywrite to include a written transfer, and that, withut that, judge Kimball could NOT rule in favour of SCO even if he wanted to.

This is the same level of "journalism" as pretendrle and mogtroll. Uninformed. Ditto with all those "analysts" who also came out with buy recommendations, talking through their goatse.cx orifices.

The one thing this experience has taught is that many and "analyst", "journalist", "expert" or "lawyer" is just another opinionated asshole, too lazy to do any fact-checking.

1. Boies could have checked the facts and told SCO "you have no case."
2. All the analysts could have checked the facts and told the world "SCO has no case."

While the average slashdotter may not be a lawyer, we seem to have a better grasp of legal fundamentals than many of the "experts". Why? Because we write code, and we know the consequences of overlooking a missed semicolon, a typo, or starting from wrong assumptions. Lawyers, on the other hand, don't have a financial incentive to give good advice or dig too deeply when it means generating less revenue.

Shakespeare had it right. "First, we kill all the lawyers."

Re:Why Are People Angry At The Author?

[miffo.swe]

The reason for the ruling was simple, SCO had no evidence supporting its claims about anything. Most of SCO witnesses was third part and so their testimoney was pure hearsay. This while IBM could line up both witnesses and piles of documentation including notes from real metings about the APA and other stuff.

In the five years SCO has had access to just about every single line of code ever written by IBM they still couldnt find a shred of evidence of the "literal copying". Add to that the BSD vs AT&T agreement wich gave all BSD code green light, the fact that UNIX is a very well specified standard that will make much of the code for anyone implementing it look similar in some places and the fact that SCO has not showed any evidence to the court and this is a very clear cut case.

This trial should have been done in weeks but the Judge really took his time whitewashing Linux from any possible doubt.

I expect this story isnt over by a long shot. I really believe this wont end until all the loose ends are tied together. That includes the pump and dump scheme and Microsofts financing a clearly frivilous lawsuit to kill a competitor.

Re:No.

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

To be fair, he was criticizing an apparent failure to follow proper legal process in ruling against a trial jury for SCO, he never claimed they were or weren't guilty, just that from the evidence it probably should have gone to trial

Then that is a matter for appeal. The trial judge ruled on a matter of law. If one of the parties thinks the ruling was in error, take it up to the next level. That's how it is done. The Court of Appeal can:

1. Decline to hear the appeal - original trial court ruling stands
2. Hear the appeal and deny it - original trial court ruling stands
3. Hear the appeal and grant it - original trial court ruling reversed
4. Hear the appeal and send the matter back to the trial court for a rehearing of the ruling on appeal
5. Hear the appeal and order some sort of baby-splitting

All of which is always subject to further appeal. All it takes is lawyers and money; guns optional.

Rubbish.

[Jaywalk]

Starting from the deliberately inflammatory headline -- note that he never tries to explain how a ruling by a District Court judge after three years of trial amounts to "mob justice" -- Parloff is scrounging for a pro-SCO angle here. He finally settles on this:

And as any second-semester law student knows, a judge can grant such a motion only when, as innumerable courts in every state and federal jurisdiction have repeatedly written, "the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion [i.e., SCO, in this situation], shows there are no genuine issues of material fact."

That's right, as far as it goes. Kimball actually said that SCO didn't have any genuine issues of material fact on their side. Parloff then goes on to pull up some stuff he thinks qualifies as "issues of material fact":

The then-CEOs of both Santa Cruz and Novell (yes, of Novell too) each supported SCO's position in their testimony -- i.e., the position Judge Kimball rejected without even letting a jury hear it.

True enough. The trouble is that the CEOs weren't involved in writing that contract. All the lawyers who were actually involved (on both sides) agreed with Novell. As did all the contemporaneous documents.

But the key issue is that none of that matters. The contract has specific language, called an "integration clause" saying that only what's in the contract matters. Anything outside the contract, like who remembers what, is irrelevant. The contract cannot possibly be read to say that SCO owns the copyrights because the contract explicitly says that copyrights are not to be transferred. Parloff actually touches on this near the bottom of his article, but then dismisses it based on SCO's argument that -- elsewhere in the contract -- it says "all rights and ownership". Now he's just being coy because the actual wording is something more like "all rights and ownership, except those included in section X". And copyright law is very explicit about the kind of language you have to use to transfer copyrights.

It's not always possible to tell a shill from an honest journalist, but SCO and their obvious shills (like Maureen O'Gara) started making claims that Kimball was legally incompetent and often overturned on appeal (not true) at about the same time Parloff came up with this bit of legal opinion. None of the regular press came to the same conclusion. Since he's playing the same riff, I'm guessing he's with the band.

Re:Not quite yet

[iamacat]

We are all screwed if majority of people consider themselves not responsible for what they do at least 40 hours/week. SCO execs would not have money to launch all those lawsuits if tens of thousands of drones were not willing to ignore their moral compass and stick with coding, sales, custodial services in HQ... The job market is not so bad that you can not find another job to feed your family. You might have to take a salary cut or even work out of profession (most good engineers are smart enough to run a Subway franchise), but the options are there.

So next time you get yelled at by an angry customer, don't just say you have no authority or responsibility to address their complaint. As long as you choose to work for the company with sucky products or service, it is your responsibility as it is people's right to yell at you for getting them screwed. A huge employee turnover coupled with cost of training replacements will soon clue in the execs on need for improvement.

Re:hmm

[gnasher719]

I suspect very few of the "call the Waaaambulance" type people here have actually read the article. There's actually quite compelling evidence of shady or unfair goings on in that trial. Completely striking the testimony of one of the main negotiators because of a family member with vested interests (having a wife work at one company is worse than you working for another company?) does seem extremely odd. It's not even slight testimony, it essentially was confirmation that SCO were told and led to believe they had ownership of Unix rights. Although this testimony could've had holes picked in, to completely discount something so incredibly important to the case is odd.

You haven't followed this case, have you?

There is an absolutely, one hundred percent clear contract between Novell and SCO: The contract says "Novell sells the business to SCO, excluding any copyrights". That's what the contract says. Sure, Novell _intended_ to sell the copyrights as well, but SCO didn't have the money for that. SCO's witnesses were excluded for a very good reason: The contract is absolutely clear. It means what it says. Any witness that says otherwise can and must be ignored. That's what the law actually says: Any witness contradicting the meaning of a written contract must be ignored.

SCO was never "told and led to believe they had ownership of Unix rights". They tried to buy these rights. Novell wanted to sell them. SCO didn't have the money.

Just yesterday I went to a shop selling 50 inch LCD TVs. I wanted to buy one. I said "would you sell that TV to me"? They said "Of course, absolutely yes". I said "How much is it?" They said "$3,000". I said "Umph. I've only got $200". I left the shop with a tiny 15" TV. But I have a dozen witnesses that I wanted to buy the 50" one, and they can all confirm that the shop wanted to sell me one. Even the shop assistant and his manager witnessed under oath that they wanted to sell me a 50" TV. So surely I have the right to get that TV for my $200?

Re:Not quite yet

[sm62704]

Justice will be served when the bankruptcy is complete

No, justice will NOT be served at all. McBride and his lawyers and the board of SCO will still be stinking filthy rich, and worse, richer than when this debacle started. Were justice to be served, Darl et al would have to spend time in prison.

There is no justice for the rich in the USSA. A rich, powerful man only goes to prison if a richer, more powerful man wants him there.

House arrest: In the USSA, prison goes to YOU!

-mcgrew

Re:No.

[ZachPruckowski]

Actually, SCO's theory was that said "implied transfer of copyright" should supersede a written and signed agreement that stated that the copyrights were not transfered. If SCO's line of argument were legally permissible, it would eliminate the entire point of contracts.

Re:No.

[jwilcox2009]

This misses the ultimate point of the article though.

Readers may have long ago wondered why I'm getting so worked up about this. After all, you may be thinking, if Kimball's ruling is really as bad as I say, won't it just get reversed on appeal? Well, that's the thing. SCO's got about $10 million in cash and it's burn rate seems to be about $1 million per quarter. It's not just fighting Novell and IBM, it's fighting the clock. Kimball's ruling could be the coup de grâce. (On Friday Judge Kimball squelched SCO's long-shot attempt to seek an immediate appeal of his August 10 ruling, so SCO will need to wait until the trial is complete before it can start the appeals process.)

SCO may not survive long enough to appeal this ruling. Now I am not going to shed too many tears of this in the particular case, but it is troubling in a broader sense that a company is going to go bankrupt because its survival was based on licensing valuable property and a judge seriously botched summary judgment.

This is not a direct reply to you, but I also do not understand why other comments are putting so much weight on the written transfer requirement. That is not what the ruling is about. The judge held that the proper interpretation of the contract was that it did not transfer the copyrights and that the contract is unambiguous on its face and completely integrated so no extrinsic evidence about the meaning of clauses needs to be taken into account. As TFA shows, there was a lot of ambiguity about the meaning of the contract and the judge looked at a lot of extrinsic evidence in deciding the contract was unambiguous. If this decision was incorrect--it looks like it was--then the case should have proceeded to jury trial. If the jury bought SCO's story over Novell's then there is no written transfer problem as the contract serves that purpose.

Re:No.

[N1ck0]

Looking at other IP court cases can lead one to believe that SCO was treated differently from other companies. If SCO sued Average Little Company Technologies Inc they may have been able to put on a good show and have a decent chance of winning. But SCO didn't sue a small company, they sued IBM, RedHat, Novell, etc and when you take a large corporation to court and provide no evidence, and use extortion style tactics on those corporation's customers, the corporation is going to fight back.

Did SCO get a black eye from the fight? Yes
Might SCO have got away clean if it was a smaller company? Yes
Is it right that this same dance in a courtroom could have defeated a smaller company? No
Should you expect to get hurt when you wage war with large amounts of people and companies? Yes

Was SCO Treated unfairly? No! If you present no evidence, and base most of your case on false assumptions the law is quite clear that you should loose. And when you base all your financials on something you should loose, you go bust.

Re:Why Are People Angry At The Author?

[NMerriam]

He actually makes a good point. From a legal standpoint, the judge (most likely) should not have granted Novell's motion for a summary judgment. The judge (probably) should have let the matter go to trial. From a "rules of the bench/bar" standpoint, the author is probably correct.

No, he doesn't make a good point. Judges are under no obligation to entertain novel new legal theories for years on end in their courtroom. The case was based on copyright, which requires explicit written transfer. There was no explicit written transfer of copyright, therefore there was no reason for the trial to go forward.

Re:Since when?...

[Frosty Piss]

The one thing this experience has taught is that many and "analyst", "journalist", "expert" or "lawyer" is just another opinionated asshole, too lazy to do any fact-checking.

1. Boies could have checked the facts and told SCO "you have no case."

2. All the analysts could have checked the facts and told the world "SCO has no case."

You seem to make the assumption that Boies and the analysts didn't know, where ignorant of the fact that SCO "had no case". Sometimes it may seem like these people are idiots, but the thing to remember is that they all have vested interests.

Take Boies: He's a lawyer, and lawyers represent guilty people all the time. Most lawyers are essentially mercenaries. The same thing can be said for so-called "analysts", most of whom are fare from "independent". The same goes for "journalists", who, contrary to what they would like you to think, are far from analytically unbiased.

My point is that you suggest all these talking heads are "too lazy to do any fact-checking" and in general ignorant of the facts. I think you are wrong, I think the facts are obvious, and we must look to other, self-serving reasons for their various proclamations.

Poor Legal Journalism

[jgoemat]

The author apparently doesn't understand contract law. If the writing in the contract is unambiguous, then parole evidence (witness testimony) can not be taken into account. Even if everyone on both sides agrees that they meant something else, that is too bad because the contract is unambiguous. That is the case here. The assets transferred have their own schedule and specifically exclude anything in another schedule of excluded assets. Under "Intellecutal Property", only these assets are included:

V. Intellectual property - Trademarks UNIX and UnixWare as and to the extent held by Seller (excluding any compensation Seller receives with respect of the license granted to X/Open regarding the UNIX trademark).

Under "Excluded Assets" we have the following:

V. Intellectual Property:
A. All copyrights and trademarks, except for the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare.
B. All Patents

So the only "IP" included are certain trademarks. Copyrights, patents, and all trademarks except "UNIX" and "UnixWare" are specifically excluded. There is no way to read the contract that would transfer copyrights. It doesn't matter what anyone thought they were doing, they should have read the contract (let that be a lesson to you). However, the person that wrote the contract remembers exactly why they didn't transfer the copyrights and why they weren't needed to conduct the business. He discussed it with the board of directors (they run the company, not the CEO) and together decided that copyrights wouldn't transfer because they were worried about Santa Cruz's solvency. Even SCO admits it doesn't have the patents, but that never affected UnixWare licensing. Their own statements (that they bought "all" of UNIX) would logically mean they must own the patents too, but they don't even claim that.

The contract was amended later so that schedule 1.1(b) V. now says:

A. All copyrights and trademarks, except for the [...] copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies. However, in no event shall Novell be liable to SCO for any claim brought by any third party pertaining to said copyrights and trademarks.

This was done after the sale, and copyright law doesn't allow copyrights to be transferred in this way. STILL no where in "included assets" even under "intellectual property" are copyrights included in the transfer, therefore they are excluded by default. This only modifies the exclusion so there is no way to read it that would legally transfer copyrights. The copyrights to transfer are not included, and are not "required for SCO to exercise its rights". Telling is the fact that Santa Cruz wanted much stronger wording and to have the copyrights transferred, but Novell only agreed to this wording for the amendment. Telling also is the fact that SCO wrote Novell multiple times in 2002 and 2003 to attempt to get them to actually transfer the copyrights and Novell declined.

Only SCO questions?

[jgoemat]

Madsen wrote in her declaration, "I do not recall anyone in the negotation teams ever saying, or suggesting, that Novell would retain any UNIX copyrights. The negotiation team for Santa Cruz never discussed the possibility, as far as I am aware, that Novell sought to retain any UNIX copyright."

Several declarations say this same thing. "I understood that the copyrights would be transferred. I don't remember anyone saying they wouldn't be transferred." The problem is though that no one remembers anyone ever saying that they would be transferred. It seems to have been an unspoken understanding that doesn't carry any weight in a courtroom. It seems that SCO cannot find a single person that remembers hearing or saying that copyrights would be transferred. That's pretty damning when the contract specifically excludes them and the only people that remember having any discussions on copyrights remember the reasons that they were NOT being transferred.

Chatlos also testified that there was no discussion about excluding or including copyrights because he believes it was implicit in the deal that the copyrights would be transferred.

Duff Thompson, a former Novell executive who now chairs SCO's litigation committee, testified that testified that his recollection of the deal was the initial direction from Frankenberg to sell the whole business. Decl. Mark James Ex. 10 ("Thompson Decl.") at 4. Thompson did not recall "any specific discussions around copyrights" or any "discussion with SCO about the excluded asset schedule" during negotiation of the deal.

Burt Levine, a former Novell in-house attorney who went to work for Santa Cruz after the APA, testified that he worked on some early drafts of the APA but cannot remember which specific provisions. Levine did testify, however, that during APA negotiations, he reviewed and marked up drafts of Schedules 1.1(a) and (b). Decl. Mark James Ex. 14 ("Levine Dep.") at 72- 74. He revised the list of included assets but did not add copyrights. [...] However, he testified that he would have been surprised to hear that Novell retained the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights. Assuming, however, that the copyrights were excluded from the APA, he testified that SCO would have an inherent license to use those copyrights in the business.

William Broderick, a contract manager and member of the Novell APA transition team who is now the Director of Software Licensing for SCO, testified that his understanding of the sale of assets was that the UNIX copyrights were transferred. Decl. Mark James Ex. 15 ("Broderick Decl.") 1, 6, 11. Although SCO claims that Broderick testified that his understanding was based on Novell's explanation of the transaction during company-wide meetings and meetings of the transition team, he testified in his deposition that he did not recall any specific discussion about the transfer of copyrights.

Jim Wilt, a business development executive at Santa Cruz, testified that it was his understanding and intent during the negotiations that SCO would acquire Novell's entire UNIX and UnixWare business, including the copyrights. Decl. Mark James Ex. 19 ("Wilt Decl.") 8. He viewed the copyrights as essential to the acquisition of a software company. Id. Ex. 20 ("Wilt Dep.") at 76-80. Although SCO refers to Wilt as the lead negotiator for Santa Cruz, Ed Chatlos testified that Wilt "dropped out" in the latter half of the negotiations of the Santa Cruz- Novell deal and Wilt, himself, concurred that he was less active at the end of the negotiations when the APA was being drafted. Chatlos IBM Dep. at 184-185; Wilt Dep. at 20-21. He also testified that the lawyers did the drafting of the APA. Wilt testified that he did not recall anyone from Novell stating that copyrights were being transferred.

So it's like me

Re:Not quite yet

[sm62704]

I think if we ever come up with Star Trek matter replicators, the "IP" crowd wil somehow make them illegal.

Re:Corporate Juries

[Myopic]

Saying a corporation is a person is wrong and is a straw man. Corporations aren't people. They can't vote, they don't have human rights. However, they do *exist* and they need to have treatment under the law. A convenient way to treat them under the law is to allow them to function as a person would, in many circumstances -- though, of course, not all circumstances. It would be patently absurd to have a corporation sit on a jury, so obviously we don't treat corporations as people for the purposes of jury duty. On the other hand, corporations can own property, so for the purposes of establishing property rights, it is both convenient and equitable to allow the corporation to assert its property rights in the same way an individual does.

You are committing a couple logical fallacies; most clearly, the fallacy of the excluded middle. Corporations are not people, but also are not totally legally un-person-like. They are in fact between those two things (legally).

Re:Corporate Juries

[Myopic]

Moderators, please, I must insist that the parent post is not insightful, it is ignorant. Corporations are not people, they are merely treated in a similar fashion under the law in some circumstances (and not other circumstances).

The factual basis of the post is wrong:

• the accused don't have the right to a trial by a jury of their peers (not in America, anyway);
• corporations are not treated as persons (in all circumstances);
• corporations don't have the same rights as humans.

At most, the post is Interesting (but wrong); at least, the post is Troll. The only redeeming part of the post is the opinion sentence at the end, which notes the overworked justice system and the dumb nature of the lawsuit in question -- which is not insightful because it is not new; again, it is at most interesting. Overall, it is Overrated.

(And this post, being a follow up to another in the same thread, is Redundant.)

Re:Since when?...

[endeavour31]

Wow are you full of shit and yourself.

Let's make this simple - you do not have a better grasp of legal fundamentals than those who do it for a living. Your assertions regarding motive are so ridiculous as to be farcical. You believed from the beginning that SCO had no case - fine. That just makes you an opinionated asshole. Lawyers get paid to advocate a case for the client but few high profile attorneys will take a shit case since losing in the public eye tarnishes their image. I am reasonably certain that Boies is competitive enough to have thought there was a real chance at winning this case however remote. You, however start with the assumption that there could not possibly be a case to begin with and that lawyers produce sloppier work that coders based on consequences and financial incentives. And we all know that bad code does not exist right?

Law is just about dispute resolution. Period. Now you can have all the philosophical arguments you want on whether the american system works or not but the nuances in cases like these are often so byzantine that very few have a complete grasp of the total picture. Trials exist to find facts and the application of appropriate law to those facts. If you assume that you are smarter and better then that reveals more about you than about your analysis of the case.

why not try debating the counter-argument? Perhaps there might be some valid points here. Then again there may not be but at least look at it dispassionately first.