I suppose this is why it’s a bad idea to run any company from the USA. Being victimized by their corrupt legal system at your own expense… This sort of thing doesn’t happen when you run your company from behind Tor and use crypto for payment.
Most legal systems do this: if you're accused of doing X, and your claim that you weren't doing X hinges on evidence that can only be produced by other parties, you explain that to the court, and then the court can decide to compel those other parties to produce that evidence in the interest of a fair trial.
In this case, Meta is being accused of anti-competitive behaviour. Their claim is that there is plenty of competition and that if they are to be put on trial, then they should be able to present evidence that there is competition. The court agreed with that statement. Meta themselves cannot produce that evidence, because they are not privy to business goings-on at other companies, all they can see is other companies that are--in their opinion--competing in the same space. As such, Meta can only go "we consider the following companies our competition, their documents should make it ample clear that we are in competition" with enough of an additional explanation to justify each company listed. And then the court goes "very well, this is motivated enough to justify us compelling these companies to produce the evidence that you claim exists as part of discovery".
The only quirk here is the claim that a small company can't reasonably do what is being requested of them by the courts. And again: not by Meta, but by the courts. Meta doesn't get these documents, only Meta's legal team gets those documents, Meta employees don't get to see what's in the many boxes of discovery material that their legal team is going to receive. Not Bob from accounting, not Kelly from finance, and not Mark from the CEO team. Only the lawyers do.
Its still unethical. First off its not that big enough of a deal to warrant the financial obliteration of a small buisness via legal fees/airfare/hotels etc. Nobody died or has their life at stake here. Second off the company should be compensated for their expenses(lost buisness/airfare/legal fees). If this doesnt happen, then its clearly a court unjustly financially harming a small buisness. Thankfully we live in an era where its now possible to operate a company anonymously and not be beholden to unethical national legal systems operating at the behest of the ultra-wealthy.
You try to downplay the severity by saying "only Meta lawyers can see the contents" but that is still wrong. Whos to say these lawyers wont steal your trade secrets and use them to their own advantage? These people are still on Meta's payroll and nothing prevents Meta from asking its lawyers to divulge those secrets. To trust them not to is incredibly naive.
> You try to downplay the severity by saying "only Meta lawyers can see the contents" but that is still wrong. Whos to say these lawyers wont steal your trade secrets and use them to their own advantage?
They are ethically and legally bound not to. They can be disbarred, sanctioned, sued by SimulaVR, even thrown in prison. You're here ranting about the US court system, but you're wrong about a lot of it.
Lawyers, especially highly paid giant-tech-firm representing lawyers, tend to play by the rules when it comes to the actual court process itself. Could they pass all this confidential information on to Mark? Absolutely, trivially so even. Would it be a crime to do so? Absolutely also that. Are they going to risk their firm for a client? No lawyer playing at the level of Meta or Apple would be that stupid.
When it comes to lawyers, you get what you pay for, and Meta pays a lot for excellent lawyers who make sure they do everything by the book and follow the letter of the law where possible, and the spirit of the law where it can be defended if it needs to be, in order to get cases thrown out or settled before they make it to actual trial.
Most cases die in discovery, exactly because the lawyers (and only the lawyers) get to see everyone's cards, and get to say "look we can go to trial, but we've both seen all the documents, and it's plainly clear that one of us is right".
"But they can air all that dirty laundry during trial!" no, they can't, because unless that dirty laundry is necessary to demonstrate competition, which would be stupidly unlikely, you don't just get to reveal every document that your legal team has access to just because you feel like it. Doing so can get you removed from trial, sanctioned, or even disbarred, depending on how severe the impact of your misconduct is. The current issue is about discovery: you and your team (and NOT your client) get to find the information you need by sifting through thousands of documents.
Just because they “could be disbarred” or go to prison does for it also doesn’t mean they physically can’t or won’t do it. So I’m actually not wrong about anything I said here.
