If you want to not admit guilt but also give up, you can also plea "No Contest" which is typically what you do every time you pay a traffic fine (i.e. Speeding Camera.
You might also hear it as nolo contendere (Latin for "I do not wish to contend") or an "Alford plea" (after the first person to use it).
I prefer the term "Alford plea" because it is indicative of the common use. Alford was charged with murder and plead guilty because the prosecution was going to seek the death penalty if he didn't.
Where an innocent or guilty plea addresses the facts of the case, an Alford plea solely addresses the case itself. Someone who makes an Alford plea is opting not to address factual evidence, but conceding that they believe the jury is likely enough to convict that there is no reason to oppose it.
To get on my soapbox for a moment, the existence and prevalence of Alford plea's is an indictment of the US judicial system. It's something people plea when they're innocent, but don't want to risk the enormous penalty the prosecution will seek at trial. Trial sentencing has become tantamount to punishing someone for exercising their constitutional rights to a trial. The prosecution is fine with a slap on the wrist until you want to exercise your right to a trial, and suddenly nothing but a lengthy jail term is appropriate.
Why are you defending a billion dollar company? Is Verizon so hard up that they need random people to defend their shit business practices? I don’t get why you’re so invested in this morally reprehensible practice.
"Why are you defending an accused rapist/pedophile/murderer?"
>Is Verizon so hard up that they need random people to defend their shit business practices? I don’t get why you’re so invested in this morally reprehensible practice.
I'm not sure how you got the impression I support "their shit business practices". If you read my comments more carefully you'll see I was only arguing that from both a practical and legal standpoint, they don't have to change their behavior. I did not make any sort of normative claim.
Technicalities are a bane of a civilized society. We have come so far that it’s acceptable to be dickheads in your business of it’s merely legal to do so. Arguments of “it’s legal” are fine in court but in society we should expect people and companies to behave better than the minimum. Arguments like yours lend credibility to things like this.
Did Verizon charge deeply misleading fees whose sole purpose is to make it hard to tell how much you'll actually be paying when you sign up for the "$59.99*†‡" plan?
Yes, unquestionably.
Is this morally reprehensible?
Unless your entire notion of "morality" is "what it's possible to get away with legally," yes, unquestionably.
Do they plan to continue doing this, despite it being abundantly clear that it's morally reprehensible and legally at least questionable?
Yes, that's the entire point of the article.
So yes: the plaintiffs settling is absolutely a "technicality" if what you're concerned about is justice, rather than pure legal procedure.