Had the defendants panicked?!
At the Judges' Bench.
As the presiding judge, Chu Changhe sorted through the statements made by the three media outlets on the defense side.
All three outlets had now specifically pointed the finger at Success Lawyer Firm.
They had also shifted the blame onto the people in charge at the time.
This was to reduce the liability borne by the media organizations themselves.
This involved a certain degree of ancillary liability.
To give the simplest example.
A bank.
The most common situation.
A bank employee stole a customer's assets.
What responsibility did the bank bear in this process?
The bank had a duty of safekeeping. Its failure to fulfill that duty had allowed its own employee to commit theft.
Then the bank had to bear responsibility.
And if the deposits and withdrawals had followed proper procedures, the bank had to bear full responsibility.
As for how the bank recovered that money, that was something the bank needed to consider, not the victim.
By the same token.
The circumstances involved in this case were similar to those in the bank example.
Although the people in charge of the three media outlets at the time had been influenced and had published inappropriate statements because of personal relationships.
But!
The media companies and official media outlets bore a certain degree of ancillary liability.
They needed to shoulder the corresponding responsibility.
However... this differed from the bank example in one respect.
Whether the media outlets bore primary or partial responsibility could be determined through their specific conduct and the detailed course of events.
This was also why the three media outlets had made statements shifting attention to Success Lawyer Firm.
Their reason for doing so was to reduce their share of the liability.
Thereby shortening the period for which they