There was good news and bad news in the magistrate judge’s opinion for six lawyers who had once represented Qualcomm Inc. in litigation against Broadcom Corp. Two years earlier, the magistrate judge, Barbara Major, had sanctioned them for an egregious discovery lapse: failing to turn over to Broadcom thousands of significant e-mails in a high-stakes patent infringement trial.
This time, in April 2010, Major didn’t reinstate the sanctions, which had been vacated while the lawyers appealed, and she exonerated them of the charge that they had acted in bad faith.
