Samsung claims Apple jury foreman LIED to get REVENGE
Wants a whole new trial
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Samsung has filed a new, unredacted version of its motion requesting a new trial in its $1bn patent dispute with Apple, revealing allegations that the jury foreman in the original trial engaged in serious misconduct that prejudiced the verdict.
Attorneys for the South Korean mobile maker originally filed the motion in September with some sections blacked out, but Judge Lucy Koh rejected its request to keep those portions sealed from public view.
In the new version filed on Tuesday and revealed by Groklaw, Samsung's attorneys claim that jury foreman Velvin Hogan "failed to answer truthfully" when asked to disclose whether he had been involved in any lawsuits. He mentioned one, the lawyers say, but he failed to disclose two others.
In one of those undisclosed lawsuits, Hogan was sued for breach of contract by Seagate, his former employer. Samsung's motion suggests that case didn't go well for Hogan, noting that he filed for bankruptcy six months later.
Why is that significant? According to Samsung, the South Korean company has "a significant strategic relationship" with Seagate. Samsung is in fact the hard drive maker's largest shareholder, having sold off its own HDD business to Seagate in 2011 in a deal valued at $1.375bn.
Curiouser and curiouser: the attorney who represented Seagate when it sued Hogan is the husband of a partner in the law firm Quinn Emmanuel – the same firm that represented Samsung in its dispute with Apple.
Given those relationships, Samsung says the fact that Hogan stayed mum about his legal history with Seagate is nothing if not fishy. "Mr. Hogan's failure to disclose the Seagate suit raises issues of bias that Samsung should have been allowed to explore in questioning," its motion reads.
In an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Hogan said that on the contrary, Samsung "had every opportunity" to question him. What's more, he said, the potential jurors were only instructed to disclose lawsuits they had been involved with in the last 10 years, meaning Seagate's 1993 suit against him was too old to mention.
"Had I been asked an open-ended question with no time constraint, of course I would've disclosed that," Hogan said.
But according to a transcript of the jury selection process published earlier by Groklaw, Judge Koh never mentioned any 10-year limit when she questioned prospective jurors in Apple v Samsung, asking only, "Have you or a family member or someone very close to you ever been involved in a lawsuit, either as a plaintiff, a defendant, or as a witness?"
Samsung's motion goes on to mention other statements Hogan made to the media as further evidence of his alleged bias. In an August interview with Bloomberg TV, Hogan said he was "very grateful to have been part of this case," and he later called it "the high spot of [his] career" and even his life – all comments that Samsung interprets to mean he had a personal motivation to be on the jury.
Hogan denies that this is the case, telling Bloomberg, "I'm willing to go in front of the judge to tell her that I had no intention of being on this jury, let alone withholding anything that would've allowed me to be excused."
Yet Samsung claims Hogan's self-admitted feelings about the trial indicate otherwise. During jury selection, it notes, when asked if he had "strong feelings or strong opinions about either the United States patent system or intellectual property laws," Hogan said nothing. But in an interview following the verdict, he told Reuters that he didn't think companies should be allowed to infringe intellectual property and that he "wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist."
Samsung's motion also points out that in other interviews, Hogan admitted to giving instructions to other members of the jury on matters of patent law based on his own experience – instructions that Samsung claims were "incorrect and extraneous" and "had no place in the jury room."
"For all of these reasons," the motion states, "Mr. Hogan's conduct ... must be fully examined in a hearing with all jurors and can be cured only by a grant of new trial."
Judge Koh may rule on the matter as early as December, when a hearing has been scheduled on various issues and motions related to the case. ®
COMMENTS
instructions that Samsung claims were "incorrect and extraneous" and "had no place in the jury room."
And Samsung would be right.
In another interview Hogan says that he believes that had he not been there, the deliberations would have taken longer and likely involved a lot of questions being referred to the judge. This, of course, being the way it's supposed to happen. What Hogan did was act as an expert witness in the Jury room, and it's not something that's permitted.
Take the source code for example, in an interview, Hogan stated that he was able to read it and so translated it to the rest of the Jury. What should have happened, is realising they couldn't understand it, they should either have asked the Judge for direction or simply dis-regarded it.
The thing that's funny about all this though, is it would never have happened in the UK. Or more accurately, would never have come to light, because the Jury aren't allowed to discuss deliberations at all. So, no media interviews for a start.
It's those media interviews combined with Hogan's apparent love of his own voice that have given Samsung the ammo for this motion. Had he stayed quiet, large parts of the issue would never have come to light. It's doubtful a lawyer would discuss jurors by name with his spouse, so I suspect it's the media coverage of Hogan (who's going to forget a name like Velvin Hogan?) that triggered a memory.
All in all, it's a bit of a fucker. On the face of it, this guy seems to have unfairly influenced (and I'm not speculating on his reasoning) what was touted as the most important patent case to date, and as a result that ruling is going to be viewed as a complete sham.
So not only as he possibly led the Jury in to deciding in a way that they may not have done beforehand, but there's now the delay and expense of a re-trial on the horizon.
Whilst the Judge could dig deeper in, I suspect she won't. Judge's often take the path of least resistance, if it looks like there's a chance a retrial might be needed anyway, she'll probably take the issues with Voire Dire as evidence enough.
Apple won't be happy, Samsung clearly aren't, the only ones who stand to benefit (as usual) are the lawyers.
Somewhere in one of the interviews Hogan gave he claims to have thought the jury were heading in Samsungs favour - implying that only changed when he had his 'a-ha' moment and led them over to Apples side.
That's very credible, while the jury ruled for Apple on the software patents, they ruled against Apples design patents - Hogan couldn't drown them in bullshit on something so simple.
Hogan is probably now #2 on Apples hit list after Google. He just sank their whole campaign. What they won won't survive the next trial, what they really needed to win (the design patents) they lost and in a retrial Koh will struggle to keep out prior art again - so they stay lost. And worst of all, there will be no product ban in place for the 2 years it takes getting to retrial and certainly no chance of a rolling ban with new products waved onto it by a protectionist judge.
Meanwhile Google are busy compiling the mother of all prior art databases...
What a ridiculous post. This article is about a possible mistrial in a patent case, and nothing to do with whether one phone is 'better' than another. But hey ho, given the reduction in comprehension shown by many register posters over the last couple of years, it's hard to be surprised.
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