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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

"On Thursday, Judge Campbell-Smith also required that Amazon pay a $42 million deposit that will be held by the court in case it later determines that the injunction was wrongfully issued and that Microsoft is owed damages."

I know $42MM is pocket change to these companies but this goes a long ways toward removing my perception of the judge being biased.

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> my perception of the judge being biased.

That perception was possibly influenced by the HN title "Siding with Amazon" vs the title the NY Times used "Judge Halts Work on Microsoft’s JEDI Contract in Victory for Amazon". At no point in the article do the words "sides" or "siding" appear.

Edit: The HN title has been changed since I wrote this.

https://twitter.com/nyt_diff/status/1228059729391476736

The NYT changed their headline after publication.

They usually run multiple headlines for each story, and I think they're A-B tested over time.

"Judge sides with side A" is to my recollection pretty standard terminology in legal reporting. Interesting that they felt the need to change it.

Not sure where the 42 came from, but requiring the party seeking an injunction to post a bond is pretty standard on a case like this. I would read absolutely nothing into it.

Why would you have that perception at all?

Because it's pretty standard in government contracts to sue after you lose just-in-case. Another example is Sig Sauer winning the M17 / M18 contract and Glock suing. When I hear of this, I assume it's just a frivolous lawsuit.

But what does that have to do with the judge being biased?

Not the judge being personally biased, per se, but in a frivolous lawsuit the defendant is made a victim of otherwise unnecessary legal fees and process, which is a bias in the system. It seems more fair that in a case where there's a high chance the lawsuit is frivolous and the plaintiff party can reasonably part with the money for a time, putting in a provision like this helps even things a bit.

It's a fig leaf.

It's not about the judge being biased, but about amazon really having nothing to lose compared to what they could gain, and swinging for the fences. It's also about the next contract.

They're unlikely to prevail, and have already, through their past actions, turned a lot of DoD people against them. If they had performed better with their previous contracts, they would likely have won this.

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