They're not lying, because the act of saying it made it true. A court would no longer permit them that argument because the counterparty would just present that highly public statement. (Maybe there's a tiny chance they could wiggle out of it, but they would have to find a human judge who would let them, and I imagine those are in short supply in a case like this.)

See: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Promissory+Est...

> they would have to find a human judge who would let them, and I imagine those are in short supply in a case like this.)

Would it be possible to find any judge who can try this case, since the set of people affected by the breach is basically everyone?

I am not a lawyer, but I have taken a bunch of law classes.

IIRC, the judge doesn't need to recuse themselves of any/all cases where they are impacted, only that they must recuse themselves where they would be unable to be unbiased, or where there would be an appearance of being unbiased.

In the lower courts, when in doubt, that's decided by other judges. At the SCOTUS level, that's decided by the individual judge on an individual level.

So, yes... They will find a judge.

Yeah that actually makes it irrelevant. The concern of people being impacted is about biases. If everyone is impacted the bias is no different than the base concept of peer justice in the first place.

They said that after New York Attorney General complained that this is not enforceable. I'm pretty sure they were hoping it would stick.