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A lawsuit case like this is a civil matter - judgements / settlements are made based on some violation of a legal agreement between two parties. Violation of th
by sethhochberg 13y ago
A lawsuit case like this is a civil matter - judgements / settlements are made based on some violation of a legal agreement between two parties. Violation of that legal agreement may or may not be a criminal issue.
For someone to go to prison, a criminal case would be needed, requiring criminal acts - not just violations of a legal agreement - and government prosecutor willing to bring charges against the parties allegedly responsible.
It seems there were (probably) criminal acts here, but as of yet we've not seen a prosecutor go after the case. These kind of things can be further complicated in the US because of the different standards of proof required for each case type. In a criminal case, the state must be able to prove "beyond any doubt" that the defendant is indeed guilty. Civil cases have a much less ironclad standard for guilt/responsibility, and can often be easier to "win" as a result.
Its certainly possible that government prosecutors are aware of the issue, and aware of the civil settlement, but don't believe they could prepare a compelling enough case based on the evidence available to win a criminal trial against undoubtedly well-legally-represented executives.
- bagels 13y agoThe emails seem like fairly good evidence for criminal misconduct, but I am not a court nor a lawyer.
- DannyBee 13y agoErrr, what criminal law do you believe it violates?
- mullingitover 13y agoObstruction of justice? The emails explicitly state that the planning should be taken offline, presumably to thwart any future investigation.
- vacri 13y agoSo every divorce case where one party tries to conceal something should end in a prison term?
- DannyBee 13y agoObstruction of justice (which is not actually a single thing, really) generally deals with doing this when there is an investigation in progress. See http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34303.pdf http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34303.pdf for more details of the federal statutes. Anticipatory obstruction is kind of a possible thing under SOX, but otherwise, no.
- bagels 13y agoAny one of the numerous federal antitrust laws that prohibit collusive behavior, such as the Sherman Act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation#Department_of_Justice_Antitrust_Action http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Li... Section 2 describes it as a felony.