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Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

I feel like cases shouldn't be droppable unless both parties mutually agree, and the courts also must first agree.the courts should not agree if it's a case that could set a precedent that can have far reaching implications.

What if next time, a smaller player than Apple was caught in this sort of case, and they can't fight back as easily? Then it'd be easier to setup a precedent favourable to one party. This seems like a way to legally manipulate the common laws, and I think courts should put in place measures to prevent such manipulation.

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One of the reasons that courts do not allow cases to continue when a party loses interest in the dispute (for whatever reason) is that the court can no longer trust that party to continue making a forceful case. You can end up with situations where the party refuses to spend money on making good arguments and finding evidence, then make very bad precedent because of it.

That's actually a good point, setting precedent by one side not being represented properly.

Thinking further, one company could easily setup another and sue it for one thing or another. The set-up company presents a believable but purposefully flawed case and voilà: legal precedent.

Some have made the argument that certain government agencies are participating in this sort of sham arrangement, under the guise of 'consent decrees' where an interest group sues an agency, and 'forces' the agency to assume a new (or expanded) power. This is a contentious issue (as you might have imagined).

> one company could easily setup another

This could happen in our current system. For example, if the DoJ in Apple had a side agreement that Apple would lose the encryption case. Obviously that's not what happened, but your conspiracy scenario isn't any more likely if courts forced a case to continue.

That seems like a massive failing of our legal system when one party "refusing to spend money on making good arguments and finding evidence" can lead to bad legal precedents. Money should be irrelevant to it, especially because most parties can't afford to spend that money. But back in reality, you're absolutely right :(

Please describe a plausible construct how your proposed concept could work.

have attorneys that are always state allocated to each side, not privately chosen.

That's ripe for abuse and incompetence, but we do it in some cases already.

Yes, absolutely - and another reason is that it forms a sort of "de facto precedent". Even though there isn't a USSC judgment, in future people will (hopefully) refer to "the time the DoJ tried to do X" and the theory is this is citation enough.

This was District Court, not SCOTUS.

Yes, which is why I said "despite not having a SC precedent"?

I lost interest in a speeding ticket case.... guess what happened ?

It's a valid argument.

Criminal cases are not precedent based are they? This whole thread is about civil suits.

Speeding can be civil or criminal based on the speed in relation to the posted limits or other parameters...

Example Arizona

Most cases of minor speeding are civil speeding violations.

However, criminal speeding tickets can be issued in these common cases:

    When a driver exceeds 85 mph anywhere in the state
    When a driver exceeds 35 mph while near a school crossing
    When a driver exceeds a posted speed limit by 20 mph in a business or residential area
    When a driver exceeds 45 mph when no speed is posted in a business or residential area

Big companies can still buy little companies to take on their lawsuits, or they can provide funding & resources to fight a legal battle as part of an investment.

I suspect that Google bought YouTube in part to avoid precisely this situation. If Viacom had won their lawsuit against YouTube, it would have endangered Google's core business: they would become liable not just for copyrighted material that they know about, but any copyrighted material on their servers, which encompasses the whole web. So they pay $1.6B for a tiny startup and a big lawsuit, and then use their full legal resources to fight (and eventually win) the lawsuit.

(There is possibly an interesting get-rich-quick hack in there: do something in a legal grey area that lots of big companies are doing too, as part of their core business, and then get sued. It is then in the big company's interest to acquire you and fight your legal battles, lest they get put out of business by an unfavorable precedent. You're playing with fire in this case, though, since if the big company doesn't come to your aid you have a multi-hundred-billion dollar lawsuit hanging over you.)

You wouldn't get-rich-quick... you'd agree to a buyout with horrible terms since you'd have zero bargaining power given the circumstances.

Also, big companies won't necessarily be your ally in this case either. Instead of being sued, large companies may be able to come to an agreement with the plaintiff where they pay some fee to continue doing what they are doing. The size of this fee or the risk of a lawsuit may be enough to discourage small startups from entering a market while just being another cost of business for the established large players. This could hurt competition in the long run as well as allowing the status quo, which perhaps should be challenged, to persist.

If you force parties to fight cases that are moot, cases where both parties' interests aren't affected, then you're deciding cases based on arguments from people who don't care about winning. That's sort of antithetical to the adversarial system, where a basic premise is that the best way to make a decision is to hear parties on each side of the issue.

If a similar case occurs, then 3rd parties (Apple, ACLU, etc) may be able to submit amicus briefs to help the defendant. Apple might also be able to intervene and become an actual party in the case, if it can convince the court that the case's outcome will harm its interests (see Rule 24 of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure).

We will see a parade of similar cases until the government wins and sets the precedent.

Witness the relentless series of attacks from SOPA, PIPA, NDAA, ACTA, CISPA, TPP, etc.

Losing only delays the inevitable because they can just play again, time after time.

Eventually they'll win one and that's all it takes, game over.

I feel like cases shouldn't be droppable unless both parties mutually agree

So if you made a bad decision to enter into litigation with someone, you're held to the consequences of that even after you've changed your mind? Unworkable in practice, and even in theory it's bad because you might wind up setting a precedent for someone whose case was similar to but better founded than yours.

IANAL, but it wasn't a "case" in a conventional sense of plaintiff and defendant.

At issue was an order, issued by a court at the government's request, that Apple was contesting.

If the order is moot or withdrawn, Apple no longer has anything to contest.

You mean, like Lavabit? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit

Cover Apple's legal fees maybe? Argument for damage to Apple's reputation, etc?

Pretty sure Apple doesn't want either of those things.

Apple agreed. The court agreed.

And yes, next time with a smaller player we get to see if Apple decides to be a friend of the court, or even pony up legal help for it.

There are at least a dozen other cases where the FBI has issued All Writs Act orders to Apple.

Citation?

https://theintercept.com/2016/02/23/new-court-filing-reveals...

> I feel like cases shouldn't be droppable unless both parties mutually agree, and the courts also must first agree.the courts should not agree if it's a case that could set a precedent that can have far reaching implications.

But what if both parties mutually agree, but the courts don't agree? Then we get a precedent set where one side doesn't see any reason to bother to try to win. That's a horrible way to set precedent. And that's how horrible precedents get set.

I don't know about US but in India any common citizen can continue to fight a court case which the government is not interest to pursue further.

The All Writs Act basically demands that the FBI drop the court order if they can find another route to achieve the goals of the writ. By many reports, the FBI was no happier than Apple about the case being dropped.

Compelling a plaintiff to continue a case sounds absurd. Is there precedent for such a thing?

But what would keep apple from supporting the defender in its legal battle in the future?

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