Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/15/computer-says-no-british-judge-refuses-to-cancel-divorce-resulting-from-computer-mistake.html
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The law person is an ass!
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This sounds like a prequel to Brazil.
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This may well be true, but I think, perhaps, he has answered the wrong legal question.
That said, not that they should have to, is this something that can be quickly fixed by getting remarried? Or are there legal and/or financial ramifications of having been divorced, even briefly?
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Hack the solicitors for the Royal Family. Divorce them all, and let’s see how that plays.
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It appears the couple were getting divorced, but weren’t expecting the decree at this point and still had issues left to resolve? (There were also issues around the question of whether they were now legally divorced, with some lawyers telling them that since it had happened on accident, it didn’t count.)
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I think the response to that would be- "Actually, that’s just skipped to the end and avoided about a decade of tabloid drama, so we’re ok with this. "
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… so please stop hurting the court’s feelings 
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In singapore (Disneyland with the death Penalty), the courts will gladly sue reporters for libel.
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Reading through the decision, it seems like it wasn’t a simple matter of clicking one wrong button, like the solicitors are claiming. According to the judge, once you click that button, you’re then presented with a series of additional screens, each of which have the petitioners names, etc., on them. In other words, he’s basically saying this wasn’t a simple mistake. It was a series of mistakes, and they were really, really bad mistakes. And not one the court made, but one the wife’s lawyers made. In other words, there’s no good excuse for them having fucked it up, so this is on them to put right, not the court. I don’t know what legal malpractice suits are like in the UK, but this seems like it should fit.
ETA: Also, the headline is wrong. This was not a computer mistake. This was user error.
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“Computer error” seems unfair. This was a lawyer error. The lawyer’s employers now reckon that their employee’s incompetence didn’t matter because he or she was using software to divorce the wrong couple.
Did the incompetent lawyer have the legal authority to finalise the couple’s divorce? If “yes”, then the software is hardly to blame.
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“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, … “the law is a ass — a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience.”
– Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
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I always felt Brazil was more inspired by The Trial than by 1984. I happened to watch it for the first time a few days after finishing the book, so the thematic similarities really stuck out to me at the time.
Anyway, you could probably power a small city by harnessing the energy of Kafka’s corpse spinning in its grave.
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one difference is that the trial reflects the passivity of the protagonist ( aka society. ) where basically he ( i forget his name ) does nothing to stop or prevent his own death. instead, he willing proceeds with each step, making it worse and worse along the way.
in brazil, there’s this sense of life to the system that sweeps up people against their will. the system is inexorable. the protagonist ( eventually ) dreams of escape, and cannot reach it.
still, i agree. in 1984, the system is omnipresent with its evil. it’s altered all of life to its purpose. in brazil and the trial, the violent side of the bureaucracy is capricious. it ignores people completely… until it doesn’t
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Indeed. Brazil isn’t a direct adaptation of either, but its spirit is more similar to The Trial than the usual comparison.
I also read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin a couple years ago. (I don’t read as voraciously as I used to). It’s supposedly the inspiration for 1984, but it’s also distinct in a lot of ways. Worth a read if you haven’t already.
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Care to expand on this? Because it seems very unlikely to me.
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I was just suggesting that he would be grieved to learn that bureaucracy continues to be indifferent to the needs of people.
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The Williams’s financial settlement will presumably soften the blow. And the lawyers will have fewer gold trousers.
The Post Office scandal is far more malicious than this.
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Yes. You’re right. However the lawyers can’t correct their mistake however hard they get sued. The court can do it in with a flick of a pen.
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Over something fictional?
I think I get the point though. Maybe.
For anyone who doesn’t know already: Kafka was a bureaucrat himself (and a very efficient one; he was repeatedly denied to leave his job and join the army in WW I), but he was far from being uncaring or indifferent. Kafka was no stranger to horrible industrial accidents and an early pioneer in workplace safety. Something he isn’t remembered for nearly enough if you ask me.
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