Comments on: Judge apologizes, agrees to pay Tom Siebel $100,000

Apology brings an end to a 12-year legal saga that started out as a wrongful-termination lawsuit against Siebel Systems, now owned by Oracle, and its founder.

[winstein]

Mittlesteadt should be fired.

12 years and only $100,000? how many people would just settle out of the court if they don't have the deep pocket? I'm certainly questioning Mittlesteadt 's judgement taking on the case.

[enwig]

Tip of the iceberg

There is much more going on here than meets the eye. As was made clear in this case, this woman was not above abusing the legal system to pursue her personal vision of the way things should be. She was clearly acting as an activist lawyer intent on doing whatever was necessary to achieve her ends; even if it meant filing baseless lawsuits that were little more than attempts at legal blackmail.

The sad aspect of this affair is that she has taken this attitude as a judge. I had the displeasure of observing her biased and activist attitudes on the bench. She routinely lets her personal opinions guide her judgments irrespective of the letter of the law. In this case, her obvious bias in favor of a few activist, historical preservationists cost a school district over $3.0 million. The ultimate insult was that, even though the lawsuit filed by these preservationists failed on all counts, she forced the school district to pay their attorney over $300,000 in legal fees. Her justification was that, even though the suit lost, it benefited the public. And the ultimate irony of that issue was that public benefit outlined by this judge was one which the preservationists publicly stated did not occur. Go figure.

The fact that she is even on the bench says volumes about the San Mateo County legal system. She should be fired.

[michael_o]

Wow

I wonder what the facts alleged were? If a person was a top salesperson at Siebel why would the company fire them for no reason? Makes me wonder what actually happened here? I don't know any of these people, or have anything to do with the companies, but $100K + 12 years? Something really ticked somebody else off.

[arutam]

no reason

What makes you think that the employee was fired for no reason? What was determined was that there was no merit in the allegations of misconduct on Mr. Siebel's part.