She's going to get hit with a 200 million dollar judgement. But she doesn't have 200 million dollars. I assume, at that point, she can declare bankruptcy.
I guess if they won the criminal case they would have a much better chance of arguing to the bankruptcy court that it wasn't intentional fraud.
Either way she is broke and even if she has 50 lawyers in the civil case, she might still lose. So she's playing it smart.
I understand it would be probably unconstitutional to delay criminal proceedings until after the civil proceedings. But can't the judge in the civil proceedings do something to prevent all the money from being spent on her criminal defense?
It seems morally wrong that someone can commit fraud and then spend the money obtained via that fraud defending themselves against the state before having to settle up with the people who they defrauded.
This technically hasn't been proven yet, that's what the criminal trial is for. If you take away that assumption, then what would be your argument?
People are allowed to allocate their money however they want. You can say that she's committing another fraud, but that would be yet another case. Maybe there's an injunction that can be filed but I doubt there's enough precedent for it.
The argument is that the civil and criminal proceedings are considering largely similar statements of fact. The burden of proof is lower in the civil case, of course, but the facts under consideration are the same. Or course, slightly different exact statements are being considered but with a substantively similar underlying truth claim: theranos was a fraud. The real point is, it's hard to believe she would ever win the criminal proceedings and lose the civil proceedings.
To me, it would make sense for the courts to insist that the civil proceeding is resolved first when the criminal proceeding is considering largely the same statements of fact but with a higher burden of proof. Why? Because the people the criminal code is supposed to be protecting are largely the same people who are suing, and those folks would probably prefer getting some money back.
The problem is that this would probably violate the sixth amendment (as is mentioned in my initial post). So, again, constitutionally, I understand why. This just seems like a bug rather than a feature.
So, this isn't about "innocent until proven guilty". This is about "speedy trial". I think one possibility, moving forward, is the following workflow:
1. Federal prosecutors communicate intent to prosecute, and provide a list of victims purportedly effected
2. Any effected victims may file civil suits
2a. Judges/congress/state legislative bodies exempt commitments to defense funds for future possible criminal cases from bankruptcy
3. civil cases resolved
4. criminal charges filed and proceedings begin
We test the limits of every amendment that applies to non-corporate-executives, so why not the sixth in fraud proceedings against C suites as well?
What is a "future possible criminal case"? Why would there be another criminal case? And if there was, what does this court have to do with it?
You're still presuming she's guilty because there's no grounds for interfering with an innocent person's finances that may affect their ability to defend themselves in court or acting on a case based on the assumed outcome of a different one.
You have provided a very complex solution that would have to be applied to all cases to address a very rare scenario.
Prior to being convicted, she is innocent. Hard to use that as a justification to kneecap her ability to defend herself because you already believe she will eventually be found guilty.
I assume I got in a flamewar with the wrong person some years back or something.
Don't really care about internet points on VC-sponsored forums, but it'd be nice to get an answer to this question from someone who knows something about law, though, so thanks :)
But, it's best to be certain! To ensure my downvotes are truly deserved: my bet is on the temporarily embarrassed millionaires taking offense to the last sentence of my prior post ;-) (i.e., /s :) )