Hacker News Reader

Comment by pclmulqdq | Hacker News Reader

For everyone who doesn't understand what's going on: Google has written a check that they claim covers the monetary damages involved in the case, and has conceded that amount. That would take damages off the table for this case. With no monetary damages, Google thinks that the state has no right to demand a jury trial.

They have also said in the article that the amount that Google claims the DOJ can prove is less than $1 million, so there's a chance this is a very small check from Google's perspective.

Polling the jury pool is not an uncommon practice in high-stakes trials, and I assume that Google has run a poll of the jury pool and found them hostile enough that they are willing to concede to 7-8 figures to avoid a jury getting involved in the decision whether to break Google up.

View on HN

How is it legally possible to avoid a jury just because the absolute, immutable majority of people understand that you are guilty?

By paying the maximum possible amount of damages for the case that the plaintiff reasonably alleges, apparently.

This is a civil case. The jury wouldn't be deciding on guilt.

It's possible to avoid a jury trial in a civil case by removing from dispute the issues which would give the other side the right to demand a jury trial.

How is that beneficial to society?

The dispute is resolved.

but it's not resolved, it is "repaired" by a cheque for an amount that was determined ahead of time by google, and the jury not consulted at all?

It's only resolved if the court agrees that the amount tendered is the limit of the monetary judgement it would legally be possible for the government to secure at trial, and that such a tender does remove the issue from the case (both of which are disputed points) in which case the damages issues would be resolved and removed from the case, and the rest of the case would go forward, but as a bench trial, not a jury trial.

It wasn't an amount determined by Google. It was the entire amount claimed by DoJ, tripled, and with interest.

Each individual legal rule isn’t formulated according to a free-ranging consideration of what’s “beneficial to society.” It would be impossible to administer such a system of rules based on ad hoc policy considerations.

The rule here, the Seventh Amendment, confers a right to a jury trial when one would have been required under English common law at the time the seventh amendment was written. Roughly speaking, in the English system, cases involving monetary damages were handled in courts of law with juries. Cases that involved injunctive relief (orders to do or not do something) were handled in courts of equity with decisions made by judges.

> How is that beneficial to society?

How is it beneficial to not require extra public burden to complete cases when the issues justifying that burden are resolved without trial?

Or how is it beneficial that issues get resolved without trial?

Because I think both have clear benefits in general.

In the US courts system, juries are used to determine questions of fact, but if the facts are not in question, a judge can apply the law and there's no need for a jury.

Agreeing that there's no question of facts speeds the whole process along quite a bit. There's no need for witness testimony, it can all be managed in hearings and with breifings.

What's happening is similar to "no contest".

Where Google accepts paying the damages but does not plead or admit guilt.

(You can do the same thing if you get a speeding ticket. And since you accept the consequences, no reason to go to trial.)

Dolla dolla bills, y’all.

Basically anything is legally possible with enough of them, or just claiming to have enough of them.

Ole Donny T. wasn’t really exaggerating when he said that he could shoot a man dead in broad daylight on Fifth Ave. and get away with it.

I'd like to add the perspective here that only the US "makes routine use of jury trials in a wide variety of non-criminal cases" [Wikipedia], so most of the world believes that justice can take place (at least in some circumstances) without a jury

> Another legal scholar, Herbert Hovenkamp of the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, called Google's move "smart" in a post on X. “Juries are bad at deciding technical cases, and further they do not have the authority to order a breakup,” he wrote.

Would a jury have the authority to break Google up?

A jury would definitely be able to set the damages number, and have some sway on whether Google gets broken up. If a jury sets a huge number, the DOJ will be empowered to go for a breakup and the judge will be swayed toward agreeing.

Incidentally, I have been somewhat involved in a few court cases, and the general advice I have been told is to explain [extremely technical topic] at a 3rd grade level if you want a jury to understand.

By the way, for people who want to argue that people are getting stupider, apparently it was a 6th grade level 30 years ago.

Maybe today's third graders are as literate and lucid as yesterday's sixth graders?

Hope springs eternal...

This is actually true. Kids in each generation are apparently more comfortable with technology, which naturally accelerates their awareness and knowledge. I can attest to it anecdotally - my kid is more attuned to the real world than I was at a much higher grade.

To some degree, I believe this. However, if you have to use mathematical logic (or actual math), the level of reasoning to use is far more simplistic at a third grade level than a 1990s sixth grade level. The same thing goes with vocabulary and grammar.

It may be possible that cases are also getting more complex involving more esoteric subjects.

Financial instruments and technology have changed a bit over time. Previously there may have been better analogues to compare things without stretching reality too much.

And people who sell both of those things have an incentive to make the process of creating them as difficult to understand as possible by the public.

Somethings are inherently complex and hard to reduce.

In the defense of the people, there has been an explosion of useless information. Just look at the number of settings on an Android phone or Chrome browser or in your Google account. Human Brains dont grow at the same rate year on year.

I'm not sure how Google an claim they have covered the monetary damages, when in this case a jury is required to decide what the monetary damages actually are. I don't think they will be allowed to opt-out of risking punitive damages or higher actual damages discovered during trial. I'm kind of surprised they tried it given the headlines will obviously be negative.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com