Thanks Paramveer!

I have verified today using a different table that setAbortAction(true) aborts the operation just fine. It isn't working on the incident table.

Right now - my theory is some business rule is calling current.update() or something that commits the changes to the database so setAbortAction(true) can't do what it is supposed to do.

Earlier I tried current.state = previous.state. This should have worked. It didn't. So I am assuming current.field_name = previous.field_name will not work either. I will give it a try.

More importantly - I will try to find all the BRs and see if any script is trying to do current.udpate() type operation. That would mess things up.