If the lawyer can prove or make BG admits JAVA is a threat then BG's actions against JAVA can be seen as deliberate rather than accidental or unfortunate.

Because the "Oops I didn't think tweaking JAVA API so it works only on Windows would hurt SUN that is trying to sell a JAVA thingie that works everywhere" card wouldn't work that well and it would established deliberate questionable practice.

In this case it might or might not be something like that.