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| Authored by: IANALitj on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 08:35 PM EDT |
The Latin maxim is "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus." It can be
quite a sharp tool, but of course when two witnesses disagree, it can cut both
ways. Sometimes a party will specifically ask the judge to give this charge to
the jury. Whether by request or on his own initiative, Judge Alsup did so.
Here is the jury instruction (this quotation from the copyright segment of the
trial):
"A witness may be discredited or impeached by contradictory evidence or by
evidence that, at some other time, the witness has said or done something or has
failed to say or do something that is inconsistent with the witness’ present
testimony. If you believe any witness has been impeached and thus discredited,
you may give the testimony of that witness such credibility, if any, you think
it deserves."
Note "if any."
The present decision is recognition by Judge Alsup that the jury may have taken
this particular instruction to heart in contexts where he thought it was
relevant.
(I have not gone back to check whether this same instruction would bear on Judge
Alsup's previous grant of judgment as a matter of law to Oracle on one of the
relatively minor copyright issues.)
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 30 2012 @ 09:06 PM EDT |
I believe Alsup putting "mistaken" in quotes is meant to suggest a
certain level of skepticism on his part about the honesty of Dr. Mitchell's
testimony.
The sentence could be written sans quotes and conveys a completely different
message. This was not likely to be casual or accidental.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Doghouse on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 03:48 AM EDT |
May I draw attention to the following, earlier line? I would suggest that
Judge Alsup's opinion as to the credibility of Dr. Mitchell's testimony is made
pretty clear in it.
Realizing that this could be problematic
to Oracle’s infringement contentions ((my emphasis)), in his trial
testimony, Dr. Mitchell testified that his report was mistaken and that those
indexes were instead symbolic references (see, e.g., Tr.
3490).
Judge Alsup is prepared to say what he thinks. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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