The U.S. Supreme Court has dismissed an NVIDIA case it previously agreed to hear as “thoughtlessly granted.” In other words: “Oops, we should never have taken this one.” The decision allows most of the lawsuit filed by shareholders against the chipmaker to proceed.
An investment firm and a pension fund filed the case against NVIDIA, claiming the company misled investors about its reliance on the crypto mining industry. The lawsuit alleges that NVIDIA hid its dependence on the market before the 2018 crash, which caused the chipmaker’s stock prices to plummet. (Be that as it may, the cryptocurrency has recovered, with Bitcoin recently crossing the $100,000 plateau for the first time.)
The court’s unanimous dismissal reflected its apparent distaste for hearing the complex technical details of the case. “The writ of certiorari is dismissed as granted negligently” is all that is stated in the decision. That language was identical to a remarkably similar dismissal in a case SCOTUS heard last month against Meta, which also accused the company of misleading investors.
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The Washington Post reports that the justices hinted at NVIDIA’s dismissal when they heard arguments in mid-November. “It is becoming less and less clear why we brought this case … and … why you should win it,” Justice Elena Kagan reportedly said. The New York Times says court members from across the ideological spectrum sounded frustrated with the arguments. “This is a very technical subject,” Justice Samuel Alito said at one point. “It seems to me that you’re asking us to do some kind of analysis that we’re not very good at and that we didn’t expect when we handled this case,” Kagan said.
As the thorny legal and ethical questions of AI loom, we can take solace in the fact that the highest court in the most powerful country in the world sounds utterly uninterested in delving into the often dizzying technicalities of Big Tech. At least in this case, the stakes are much lower, which only affects the finances of an insanely wealthy company and a group of (probably wealthy) Wall Street investors.
