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Surely "presenting yourself to the other jurors as an expert due to your prior experience" is over that line, no?
by jbri 14y ago
Surely "presenting yourself to the other jurors as an expert due to your prior experience" is over that line, no?
- twoodfin 14y agoWhat's the evidence that he presented himself as an expert? He obviously knew more about patents than some of the other jurors, so he was better able to explain some of the material presented during the trial. Would it have been better if he'd just stayed silent and left them confused? I can imagine what crossing a bright line would look like. Something like: "I know the judge told us X, but I'm an expert and really Y." But I don't think there's evidence that's what happened.
- KirinDave 14y agoThe interviews with other jurors made it clear that they deferred to his opinion in this case, the which makes it very hard for the foreman to deny what happened. Groklaw links a lot of the interviews so you can see for yourself, if you're curious. I'm not sure why people are surprised here. It's not like the verdict against Samsung wasn't warranted and won't be upheld in subsequent cases. The problem is the juror's dismissals of other patents held by Samsung that clearly were applicable. The only thing that makes this broken patent system remotely tolerable is a fiction of fairness. If we allow the jury to discard even this in punitive fashion, then things are worse than we realized. P.S., sorry for the first garbled iteration of this post. I'm still dialing in SwiftKey for tablets.
- debacle 14y agoThe other juror's statements make it clear that there was confusion on the jury, and instead of asking the judge (as jurors are supposed to do), they relied on the foreman's personal experiences.
- pja 14y agoMaking assertions about patent law that are objectively false would surely be over that line too. Questions of law are for the judge, questions of guilt or innocence are for the jury. Isn't that the rule?