Venue change denied;stay mostly granted

Message ID: 153386
Posted By: al_petrofsky
Posted On: 2004-07-12 18:05:00
Subject: Venue change denied;stay mostly granted

AutoZone's motion for a change of venue (to Tennessee) was
denied. The case will stay in Nevada.

Judge Jones said he will follow Judge Robinson's lead and
stay the case indefinitely, like the Red Hat case was, with
the parties to send him updates on all the other actions
every 90 days.

However, he will give SCO a chance to file a motion for a
preliminary injunction to be in effect during the stay, and
he will allow one round of discovery to facilitate such a
motion.

That is, if SCO believes that it will be irreparably harmed
during the stay, it may ask for an order that, during the
stay, AutoZone is not to engage in whatever the harmful
activity is. SCO will have thirty days to propound any
discovery requests (interrogatories, document requests, or
depositions) that are necessary for its preliminary
injunction motion, and AutoZone will have thirty days to
respond to them.

The case will be stayed indefinitely, pending other cases,
regardless of the outcome of SCO's request (should it decide
to make one) for a preliminary injunction, which would just
describe what things (if any) AutoZone needs to refrain from
doing until the stay is ended.

AutoZone asked the judge to reconsider the part about the
preliminary injunction, pointing out that SCO has never
sought a preliminary injunction (which has quite stringent
requirements) against anyone, and that it's very difficult
to imagine that SCO could show sufficient grounds for a
preliminary injunction, because the only thing SCO wants
with respect to the infringing conduct is to be paid for it,
and monetary damages are never considered irreparable (they
can always be paid later, with interest).

AutoZone also tried to persuade the judge that this single
round of discovery would inevitably become a protracted,
highly contested, and frustrating process that goes nowhere
and wastes everyone's time (i.e., just like the SCO v. IBM
discovery process), but Judge Jones seemed confident that he
could keep this to a simple 60-day process, and that the
potentional for a mere 60-day waste of time is not that big
a deal.

Overall, I like Judge Jones. He seemed to be on top of
things and to have a nice ability to cut to the chase. The
hearing only took thirty minutes. On the issue of the venue
change, he said AutoZone's statistics about Tennessee being
faster than Nevada were out of date. Nevada has recently
increased its number of judges by two (he's one of them,
just added in December) and he's got plenty of time: he
could even schedule this case for trial as soon as next
month, if the parties are ready.

Message ID: 153439
Posted By: walterbyrd
Posted On: 2004-07-12 20:06:00
Subject: Re: Venue change denied;stay mostly gra

Thanks for all your hard work al_petrosfsky.

Sadly, it looks like scox wins again. The last thing scox wants is for any of these cases to be tried in a court room.

I suppose I shouldn't blame the judges. The judges are probably used to lawsuits that are filed because one party is actually suing the other. As opposed to lawsuits that are filed to fud a particular operating system, or to lend credibility to an extortion racket, or to help pump the stock price of a failing company.

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