[latch]

You're jumping to conclusions by assuming that a federal judge is jumping to conclusions. If you read that and the first thing you think is "that judge can't judge!", that's not good.

Anyways, the judge has made is very clear that the evidence against them is very strong, that the record is very strong, and that so far neither Uber nor Levandowski have denied that he stole the 14 000 documents.

[bhups]

I'm neither a lawyer nor a judge, but I'm just wondering if this is a typical type of thing to assert during a judgement. It just jumped out as impartial to me.

[latch]

Impartial doesn't mean indifferent.

This has been going on for a fair amount of time, the judge has reproached Uber more than once, a lot of evidence has been submitted. It appears that the judge has decided that, at this point, there's enough evidence to say that it's a fact that he stole the documents. They had a chance to challenge the [apparently overwhelming] evidence Google has, and they failed [apparently, also overwhelmingly].

[ABCLAW]

This is typical. Judges that refuse to say anything about arguments they aren't buying are insecure about being too transparent on appeal. More senior judges will tell you rather quickly if they think your argument doesn't hold any water or alternatively that even if your argument is right, you're not going to get the outcome that you're pleading for. They won't 'decide' then and there, but they'll often make it clear that absent some big reveals come discovery time that you're in big trouble.

[TulliusCicero]

I don't think impartial means what you think it means.

[bhups]

Possibly, I think "impartial" means reserving the judgement until the judgement is to be made at the end of the trial as opposed to in the middle of the trial, which could very well be wrong - IANAL.

[btilly]

You would be entirely wrong.

A trial like this is not a single giant evidence dump followed by a giant decision. It is a series of hearings. After each hearing something can be ruled on. You can issue a subpoena to collect more information about A, we have settled B as a fact, you are misreading the law so you have to drop that line of inquiry, etc.

Each hearing is impartial. But impartial decisions come at many points. In fact some points will be appealed to a higher court which will make a ruling and then send it to a lower court again with instructions about how to proceed.

This sort of thing can take years.

[GauntletWizard]

And that's where you're very wrong. Large portions of a trial require judgements to have already been made, even if they've not been written down in a definitive 'judgement' yet. Alsup has made it clear that he's decided that it is a 'matter of fact' that Levandowski stole documents. Now they're arguing over who's responsible and liable.

IANAL, so I might be way off base.