Samsung Claims Jury Foreman Misconduct Tainted Apple Case

Posted by ZenSoul on October 4, 2012 03:44 am 1

In the recent days a potentially big news risks to deeply shakes the Apple vs Samsung trial and result.

Accordingly to Samsung, the foreman in the case, Velvin Hogan, failed to disclose to jury and court he had been previously involved in a court case against Seagate *a former employer), a company in which Samsung has a controlling share, thus making the presence of Velvin in the case's jury a potential conflict of interest.

The fact that the lawyer defending Seagate in the Seagate case (that Velvin lost, causing him to go almost in bankruptcy) was also the husband of an associate in Quinn's firm (the firm that defended Samsung in the case) isn't helping the situation either.

In addition to that, Velvin revelations made to newspapers and blog sites (The Verge is cited too) after the court case, show he could have influenced the jury using statements that were presented as legal facts but they weren't at all, rather personal opinion on matters of legal copyright and patenting laws.

If these allegations would be demonstrated as valid, Samsung would have a big chance to get a new trial.

I'm a little bit surprised The Verge hasn't posted anything about this, given how fast they are normally on news regarding the case. Could be their direct involvement due to the revelation made to the Verge by Velvin have made them moving cautiously on the matter.

Nevertheless, for anyone interested in getting more details about the story, there are a couple of nice articles on BusinessWeek and Neowin (neowin cites a 10-year limit about the cases to be disclosed by the jury in which they were involved, but that's not correct, the transcriptions show the jury was asked any court cases they were *ever* involved):

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-02/samsung-claims-jury-foreman-misconduct-tainted-apple-case

http://www.neowin.net/news/samsung-jury-foreman-in-the-apple-case-lied

As always, those searching for a deeper analysis of the case, you can have a look at groklaw:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20121002201632770