IT disputes: where going to the dogs takes whole new meaning

I've been reading a judgement from the English courts concerning a botched 40 million pound (US$62.7 million) CRM (customer relationship management) project which EDS was supposed to carry out for BSkyB.

The judgement is a mammoth 468 pages and the case involved over 100 trial days and thousands of trial documents. I was told the legal costs are approaching 70 million pound (US$109.7 million) and the potential damage to EDS is in the hundreds of millions of pounds.

Big IT projects are always risky. How do you tell the customer that you are using "proven solutions" with "leading-edge technology"? Aren't they contradictory?

How do you rein in all those marketing statements and promises that you will never be able to keep?

The judge found EDS liable and a key part of the case was the credibility of its main witness, who insisted that he had an MBA from a university. The lawyer on the other side identified the university as a degree mill and promptly obtained a similar degree for his dog.

I guess at that point in time, this case simply went to the dogs.