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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> I fail to understand how HN and the court system do not think the same against Apple

"The court system" is not a collective entity with a shared set of thoughts. Different judges, different arguments, in one case (but not the other) a jury, these things make a difference.

The appellate process and the system of binding precedent goes with it serves to somewhat make things more consistent overall than individual trial court processes would when considered over a longer time and a larger number of cases, but cases very close in time ending up with different trial court decisions despite broadly similar fact patterns are not really surprising.

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So they dont look at precedents in court system in USA ?

They do, but not proactively. You have to bring a case before the court for the precedent to get considered.

Lots of things that are legal/illegal are only so because they haven't been tested in court. Precedents are also specific and sometimes the details of a case make it different enough that the precedent does not apply.

I don’t think this deserves t be downvoted. It’s just a misunderstanding. What you’re thinking of is a different concept in the US legal system called res judicata or issue preclusion.

It does deserve to be downvoted, it seems to ignore the second paragraph of the post it responds to. That’s annoying.

I don’t think the parent is particularly clear about what it’s referring to or why the Apple decision would be binding. It just looks like two ships passing in the night over precedent vs estoppel.

District courts don’t set precedent; appellate and supreme courts do.

“Trial” inatead of “district”, and “supreme” is unnecessary, since in the cases where it is right in US court systems it is redundant with “appellate” and its wrong in New York, where “the Supreme Court” is one of many kinds of trial court (but where there are also appellate divisions and appellate terms of the Supreme Court which serve as intermediate appellate courts, with the ultimate appellate court—equivalent tothe Supreme Court in most other US jurisdictions—being the Court of Appeals.)

> So they dont look at precedents in court system in USA ?

I literally described how that impacts things: "The appellate process and the system of binding precedent goes with it serves to somewhat make things more consistent overall than individual trial court processes would when considered over a longer time and a larger number of cases".

Its funny how "binding precedent" doesnt apply to the same court that gave both decisions. It is the Northern district Court of california. Thus precedents mean nothing and Jury is free to give arbitrary decisions.

Juries are free to give arbitrary decisions, that is unrelated to precedent, which has more to do with how a judge interpreted a law.

Lookup "jury nullification" if you're curious to learn more about juries giving arbitrary decisions.

> Lookup "jury nullification" if you're curious to learn more about juries giving arbitrary decisions.

Nullification only applies to criminal cases (the discussion here is about civil, not criminal, law) and only in one direction. Lookup "directed verdict of acquittal", "judgement as a matter of law", and "judgement non obstante veredicto".

This is true in one sense (that the jury doesn't always have the final word) but does not seem to actually argue against the point made in loaph's comment.

I think what loaph is saying is that a jury, when making a decision, can make any decision it wants, without consequences (except in exceptional cases, e.g. jury tampering).

The jury might never get to actually make a decision, and a guilty verdict can be overruled by a judgment notwithstanding the verdict (or as a result of an appeal, etc.), but legally, when a jury has made a decision, they can't be punished for making it, even if they were unreasonable in reaching that verdict.

How did whether juries are punished become germane? I thought the question at issue was just consistency vs capriciousness of the courts taken as a whole.

This was my intended meaning, thank you!

I wanted to point out that juries can make arbitrary decisions, nullification being a kind of example of this.

> Its funny how "binding precedent" doesnt apply to the same court that gave both decisions.

I dunno, the fact that precedent is only binding when it is from a higher appellate court to a court subordinate to that appellate court isn't what I'd describe as "funny", just rather sensible.

> Thus precedents mean nothing

Not that I've seen any inconsistent legal ruling offered between the two cases. The fact that the broad outline of the case is similar doesn't mean the decisive legal questions are, but, yes, precedent from a trial court decision isn't binding (same or different court), only, at best, persuasive, and then only if it is a citable (published) decision in the first place, which most trial court decisions are not.

> Jury is free to give arbitrary decisions.

Well, no, the jury is "free" to give answers that the trial judge finds to be reasonably supported by the evidence to the questions the trial judge poses to the jury.

And that's not directly affected by precedent anyway, precedent only governs questions of law, not fact, and juries don't answer questions of law, only fact.

Well 20 Yrs ago, Microsoft faced an Anti trust lawsuit in Federal court for shipping a browser, now Apple and Google both ship with a ton of software not just browser and restrict users from installing the software of their choice, yet Apple seems to be not facing any backlash. While Google lost for the same cause. This seems not only arbitrary but also shows the weakness in US court system and Arbitration by a Jury. The anti trust lawsuit against Microsoft could be a precedent for a case against both Apple and Google.

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