Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
I prefer not to speculate about people's unstated motives, though I couldn't be certain you'd articulated exactly the argument I'd assumed you had.
There seem to be a lot of members here (and I'm not naming names) who retain someone's initial stated opinion and then choose to respond to all subsequent posts by that individual as if they were camouflaged attempts to advance an agenda stated or implied by the early opinion.
Digressions are fine, but constant ad hominem seems a degradation of the momentum of any discussion. To respond to more reasonable posts as if they were interchangeable with a poster's initial misstep is to privilege enmity over speculative thought.
We all make mistakes and some of them are emotional in nature. Everyone loses their cool occasionally (though some of us are more practiced at losing it off-camera).
My sense is that we're out of our legal depth. I can see the logic of your argument but know of no way to test or verify its application here.
FJ Torres makes the point that everyone but Apple chose to settle and avoid being targeted -- the idea being that Cote's decisions regarding punishment are unprecedented because no other corporation has been as stupid as Apple about refusing to settle in the face of such charges.
Whether or not you think that argument is fair to Apple or relevant to the sweep of Cote's decisions, I find the idea difficult to accept -- not because Apple is necessarily in the right, but because corporations often do stupid things based on bad legal advice. If Apple is guilty of that, then I doubt they were the first to make that mistake.
And if Apple isn't the first, then I'd have to study past cases in which companies chose not to settle and compare the actions and outcomes of those to the current example.
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I certainly find the doctrine that a judge should increase someone's punishment for daring to exercise their constitutional rights to be both arrogant and repugnant.