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A summer intern once saved Valve from a near-fatal lawsuit after a publisher 'decided to go World War 3' on it, and it all hinged on one email (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 98 points 2 days ago (7 children)

In a bit of malicious compliance, Vivendi turned over millions of pages of Korean language documents from its local subsidiary during the discovery phase of Valve's cybercafe lawsuit, with anything potentially useful to Valve buried under both the volume of material and a language barrier. Quackenbush turned to a summer intern identified only as "Andrew" in the documentary. A native Korean speaker who also majored in Korean language studies in college, Andrew found the needle in the haystack: An email where one Korean Vivendi executive discussed the destruction of documents related to the Valve case to their superior, with the implication that the more junior executive was ordered to do so. With this evidence in hand, Valve was able to turn the tables on Vivendi, securing a highly favorable settlement and full ownership of its IP moving forward.

It's not clear to me how the email described was helpful though?

[–] [email protected] 125 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Destroying evidence is a big no-no in a legal case, and would allow the judge to draw a negative inference, so I'm guessing that gave Valve the leverage to settle the case.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Destroying evidence is a big no-no in a legal case, and would allow the judge to draw a negative inference, so I'm guessing that gave Valve the leverage to settle the case.

Ah, that would make sense. So Valve probably won more on procedural grounds then?

"Needle in a haystack" made me assume it was something like actual contractual language forbidding Vivendi from doing what it was trying to do.

[–] themoonisacheese 11 points 2 days ago

(I am not a lawyer)

To me this is what allowed them to not comb through the millions of documents. Since you have a piece of evidence they gave you admitting to destroying additional evidence, they basically can get not goodwill at all in front of a judge, so it doesn't matter if they say "your honor everything was turned over during discovery and we're all clear", the instant your lawyers contact their lawyers, it's settling time.

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