Thanks for sharing this. I've only skimmed through it as most of it is pretty boring, but it did get me wondering, does anyone involved in this trial remember what it is actually about? Ira's lawyers seem to be concentrating on making the case that Craig is
not Satoshi, and Jimmy Nguyen is defending his stance that he
is. Of course, if Craig and Dave didn't mine bitcoins, then Craig wouldn't be on the hook for anything... I think this trial is now
entirely about whether Craig (and Dave) is Satoshi or not, Ira's proceeds or settlement be damned.
Huh?
I don't see how you can determine what a trial is about from various pieces of evidence and/or testimonials that are done in preparation for trial, which is one of the main purposes of taking depositions (to prepare for trial, explore issues and perhaps allow for settlement based on revelations of facts that could get presented at trial).
Frequently, testimony or evidence is gathered that is just meant to show one aspect of the case, and sometimes one lawyer or another might overlook some aspects of what game is being played based on the pleadings and the various issues before the court, and evidence that comes out in a deposition might not even be introduced in court, so it ends up NOT being evidence in the final decision and/or presentation.. but still can help the parties in terms of deciding what they might consider to be reasonable settlement proposals.
Of course, the best attorneys are not going to lose sight of the pleadings, but they still might conclude that one piece of evidence favors them when it is looked at in terms of the pleadings the evidence might either work against them or end up being completely irrelevant.
Also, sometimes, even the lawyers might not understand the significance of certain evidence until they are putting together their final arguments and they might not even know what their final arguments are going to be until they actually know what evidence ends up getting presented in trial and how some of that evidence might end up getting framed during the proceedings including the fact that some evidence might be introduced for limited purposes or only to apply to certain issues in the case and not for other issues.
So after the evidence is produced in trial, then they end up making the logical connections between evidence that they might not had previously considered to have been connected.
I am not suggesting that there might not be some allowance from either side to get caught up in the presentation of irrelevant evidence or evidence that is not really going to be able to be used by either side in the actual argumentation of the final issues, but sometimes attorneys might allow irrelevant evidence to get flushed out, especially during the deposition stages, because such pursuits could either lead to relevant evidence or at least the evidence is not hurting them in either way, even if it were presented in trial, and sure they are getting paid while they are participating in depositions, too.
So, of course, depositions are done in order to prepare for trial and can have a tendency to go way beyond relevancies, and in the end, such witness might not even end up getting called by either side, even though they might have spent days or weeks taking their deposition and exploring various evidentiary avenues through such witness.