Doesn't litigation come to an end when justice has been served? I don't know the details of the case, nor do I have a stake in this, but it seems odd to limit damages if one party illegally withheld information.
This coupled with the recent Supreme Court ruling that prosecutors effectively can't be held accountable for hiding evidence that would exonerate a defendent -- seems to be saying that your best strategy in the legal system is to illegally withhold information, because the legal system will eventually not care, even if the actors in the case still do.
Litigation ending only when justice is served is an impossible standard. The losing party (whichever side it is in that round) will obviously feel justice has not been served and appeal endlessly. If the two sides agreed on what constituted justice, there wouldn't be a court case.
> If the two sides agreed on what constituted justice, there wouldn't be a court case.
And indeed this is the entire point of the common law: to provide independent decisions, according to rules, in order to settle disputes without violence.
Endless appeals don't always work either -- you actually need a legal reason to appeal beyond "I disliked the decision". You need something like "The judge was wrong on points of law X, Y and Z" and you need the appellate court to agree that there might be something to review.
Most appellate courts look pretty dimly on appealing for the sake of appealing. Plus their time is limited, so they will tend to pick cases with broader legal consequences that will impact more than the disputants.
I think more to the point the amount awarded the Winklevoss twins is sufficient to cover their damages. Also, IIRC Facebook didn't withhold information from the court, they withheld information during a settlement negotiation.
When purchasing private securities via any mechanism the purchasing party should to due diligence to ensure they are receiving fair value for it. I think they have a latin phrase for this something like 'caveat emptor'.
That the Winklevosses have this much money, that many connections, and manage to get themselves duped by the same guy is impressive.
I think more to the point the amount awarded the Winklevoss twins is sufficient to cover their damages.
If so, then justice has been served. Again, I don't know the details, so if that's the case, I'd hope the judge would actually state that even in the light of any new evidence their damages have already been covered in full. Exclaiming that there's simply an end to litigation seems to imply that justice hasn't been served, but we don't want to bother with it anymore.
Also, IIRC Facebook didn't withhold information from the court, they withheld information during a settlement negotiation. When purchasing private securities via any mechanism the purchasing party should to due diligence to ensure they are receiving fair value for it. I think they have a latin phrase for this something like 'caveat emptor'.
There are laws around disclosure of information for private securities. Maybe none of those laws were broken or didn't apply. But that seems like a reasonable question for the courts. I hope the judge actually weighed this and didn't simply toss it because he thought he had more pressing matters.
The writing of judgements tends to resemble a recursive descent parser. The case itself will cause the parties to survey the tree of legal arguments quite thoroughly; then it will be up to the judge to present the version of the law they believe is correct.
Judges don't like being appealed against, so as a rule they will treat every argument made before them when rendering judgement. Otherwise they leave an opening for an appeal on the basis that certain arguments weren't settled.
