| SCO, Pamela Jones, and money |
Apr. 06, 2007
If I were an SCO stockholder, I'd really be wondering just how much longer SCO will continue to drag out its lawsuits and waste my money on sending high-priced lawyers on wild goose chases.
Take, for example, one of SCO's newest motions, the -- take a deep-breath now -- "Memorandum in Support of Its Motion to Deem a Prospective Third-Party Deposition in Related Litigation to be a Deposition Taken in This Case as Well." In English, SCO's lawyers are claiming that they are still trying to serve a subpoena on Groklaw's Pamela Jones and take her deposition.
This, they claim, is a followup to their earlier attempt to depose Jones for whatever dark secrets she might possess about SCO's case against IBM. Since Jones has published pretty much everything that has fallen into her hands about the case, I couldn't tell you what, of any possible legal value, they're looking for.
Among other exhibits that SCO is using to claim that Jones is refusing to accept the subpoena are the Linux-Watch story, "Yes, there is a PJ, and its discussion thread.
I'm not at all sure what the point of citing my article is. It's news that Jones is a private person? Be that as it may, what really can be gained by having Jones swear to... ah... what really? All she has really done over her years at Groklaw is to make it easy for lay people to find the public legal documents about the case. Oh, she has some very strong opinions about SCO's cases, but then so do I and a lot of other people.
No, the only real goal that SCO seems to have is to try to prove that Jones is trying to avoid the "discovery of Ms. Jones's allegiance and financial connection to Novell and IBM, which underscores her motivation to avoid having to testify in this matter."
How much longer do we have to put up with the claims? A few days ago, some rather naive reporters were reporting that Jones was getting paid off by IBM because Groklaw receives free hosting from the ibiblio project, which in turn is funded in part by grants from IBM and other tech companies with a strong interest in promoting Linux. Too bad, for the point they were trying to make, that ibiblio will host almost any Web site that's non-profit and has useful information.
Other than that, the only other reason I can think of for SCO to be following this course is to annoy Jones, since, over the years, she has certainly annoyed them. That tendency may be human -- but is it any way for a company to behave?
In particular, as that hypothetical stockholder, do I want SCO spending its money trying to chase down Jones for no good reason?
Take a look at the actual document. I count seven lawyers as having their hands on it. Now, I don't know how much the local guys -- Hatch, James & Dodge, P.C. -- make per hour, but, thanks to my wife, the former CMO of the international law firm K&L Gates, I do have a pretty good idea how much the high-powered lawyers from top law firms like Dorsey & Whitney LLP and Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP cost. Those three attorneys are likely to be making from $400 to $600 an hour.
So, let's say they're billing SCO $500 an hour per lawyer, and the local lads are hitting them up for $250 an hour, and it took them, oh, an hour to whip this up. That's $2,500, without throwing in the costs of the paralegal and legal secretary. What value, exactly, am I getting for that $2,500?
Oh, SCO has the money to pay for it. Well, so long as Novell doesn't get them to cough up the money they got from licensing Unix to Microsoft and Sun.
With over $12 million in cash and cash equivalents, and with several million in an escrow account for legal expenses, SCO sees no trouble seeing the cases through. In SCO's last quarter, the company incurred only $654,000 in legal expenses, which is quite a bit less than the millions per quarter they had previously been shelling out. SCO CEO Darl McBride was quite right in January 2007's quarterly report press conference when he said the "heavy bulk of the legal expenses are in the rear-view mirror."
But, my question, after years of litigation and discovery and the only proof that SCO has managed to come up with is 326 lines of rather dubious code, is this: Isn't it time to start doing something else with that money? Like using it to fuel SCO's ongoing reinvention of itself as a mobile service middleware and services company with ME Inc. and Edgeclick? Perhaps, trying to prop up SCO's faltering Unix business?
Maybe it's just me, but if I were a stockholder who actually cared about SCO's real future, and not some fantasy where SCO wins billions from IBM, I think I could find a better use for the company's money than chasing down a paralegal. Especially, one who doesn't really have a thing to do directly with any of my cases.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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