Honestly, I really doubt the jury was in there… hopefully he called a bench conference. But either way, if it was said on the record Oracle could be smart to preserve any objections to the judge’s order for appeal.

But yeah, injecting his own opinion into a courtroom with a jury may backfire here.

It is in the Code of Ethics!

And if you had judges deciding based on their own relative experiences, cases would end up all over the place and there would be ZERO consistency and things would be … wait a minute … the way they are now! Fancy that!

There are entire classes and courses on this very subject. Go to law school, you will see.

;)

Lawyers pull fast ones all of the time in court, whether judges notice it or not. If opposing counsel doesnt catch it then too bad. The only time it doesnt work is if there is a legal reason why the evidence is inadmissible.

That is not the case here. A SMART judge would have said, OUTSIDE OF THE PRESENCE OF THE JURY, “I know how long it takes to come up with X type of code, and it isn’t that long, but I will allow you to present evidence to the jury to that end because they are the ones who need to decide here.”

When this case is appealed you can guarantee that this will be one of the reasons Oracle appeals. The judge did not allow them to present evidence showing how long it would have taken to come up with X type of code, therefore their case was prejudiced.

:)

The point is that evidence is supposed to be evaluated by the jury and ONLY the jury in this case. This is a jury trial not a bench trial. If it is BS, it is the opposing party’s job to point that out to the decider–the jury. It is not the judge’s job to poke holes in anyone’s case because the judge is NOT the fact finder in a jury trial.

Judges DO get to decide whether evidence is adnissible or not … and that is where they inject their opinions all day long. It cant be helped, they are human. But it is inappropriate of them to do. Particularly here where the judge seems to be letting his own personal opinion get in the way of his decision making.

The outcome would have been different with a different judge, wouldnt it have? How fair is that? Not very.

You might approve of judges blindly accepting any legal utterance as gospel fact. I however, would like the judge to have an inkling of when he’s being lied to based on his own knowledge of what ever process is involved. I know it can’t happen in every case, but I’m glad when it does. IMHO, the best use for most lawyers is either as fertilizer or landfill, depending on the season..

I applaud a judge that does his research, as it is all too easy to take a wrong step in such a complicated matter.

As for lack of impartiality and media awareness… please take off the drama queen glasses.

He is the judge, not a witness, and he better pray that the media doesn’t take this and run with it, and that the juror weren’t present when he made his comment.

Either way, he just secured an appeal for Oracle.

Ouch :)