I preach all the time how important serving is, so I thought, what better way to put my money where my mouth is.
– Cambria County Judge Linda Fleming, who was called for jury duty last week, for the first time in several decades. She was dismissed before getting seated, but only after watching a juror instructional video — in which she is a guest speaker.
Right on schedule, attorneys representing Samsung have filed an appeal a month after the company’s glorious failure in its IP faceoff against Apple.
Quinn Emanuel, Samsung’s firm, has taken the jury misconduct route as a way to get the $1 billion dollar verdict tossed. How exactly does Samsung argue the jury — which returned a verdict after only two days, and originally tried to award damages on patents that weren’t infringed — screwed up?
Let’s just say loose lips sink ships, and might even scuttle billion-dollar patent verdicts….
Continue reading “Samsung Appeals Billion-Dollar Verdict; Alleges Juror Misconduct”
The average person is relatively honest. Why do we create rules that force otherwise honest people to lie?
We do this to many people. Think first about physicians.
For some reason, New Mom and Baby should spend one extra night at the hospital. Mom and Baby are doing fine, but the doctor sees a reason for one more night of rest. What does Doc do?
The insurance company won’t pay for, and Mom can’t afford, an extra night at the hospital, so Doc lies: He falsely notes that Baby is “jaundiced,” which justifies the necessary night at the hospital. The rules have turned Doc into a liar.
I’m sure that’s just the start of what the insurance bureaucracy does to turn honest physicians into routine liars. But I’m thinking today of rules that turn perfectly honest lawyers into liars. Once you start thinking about it, you’ll come up with endless examples . . .
Continue reading “Inside Straight: Turning Lawyers Into Liars”
Better than jail…
* “He’s stupid. I wouldn’t even count him as a Republican.” Many Republican women at the RNC wish that the men like Rep. Todd Akin would just shut up about abortion, rape, and contraception. [Reuters]
* Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the discrimination against minorities. A panel of judges on a D.C. federal court shot down the state’s redistricting plans for lack of compliance with the VRA. [Washington Post]
* A disgruntled Stanford Law graduate’s defamation and retaliation suit against the school was dismissed. Sorry, but it’s highly doubtful that a law professor blacklisted you from getting a job. [National Law Journal]
* “[T]here’s a surplus of attorneys and not enough jobs for it.” Lincoln Memorial’s president admits amid accreditation issues that perhaps it wasn’t the best time to open Duncan Law. [Knoxville News Sentinel]
* “I don’t know if this was worth it, but I did have a good time in Cancun.” Skipping deliberations to go on vacation is a great way to earn yourself a trip to jail, but this girl got lucky. [Proof & Hearsay / Journal Sentinel]
* Continental faces a lawsuit after baggage handlers allegedly removed a sex toy from a passenger’s luggage and taped it outside the bag for the world to see. At least it wasn’t the TSA. [Courthouse News Service]
On Friday afternoon, after just under three days of deliberation, the Apple v. Samsung jury came back with a tidy little verdict awarding just over $1 billion to Apple. Meanwhile, Samsung got nothing on its counterclaims.
It was a big win for Apple, and it came surprisingly quickly. As Elie pointed out, it would take many smart people more than three days to even understand all the the terms within the 109 pages of jury instructions. Aside from the jury itself, it seemed no one was ready for the verdict. One attorney for Apple even showed up in a polo shirt.
Let’s have a post-mortem run through of the case (and a quick-and-dirty look at the massive attorneys’ fees incurred by both sides)….
Well, that was quick. After weeks of trial and a multitude of jury instructions, we have a verdict in the Apple v. Samsung case.
The jury took just two three days — or 21 hours, to be more precise. They’ve been asked to answer more than 700 questions, but they’ve deliberated for just three days! Bored much?
We’re reading The Verge’s live feed from the courtroom. Let’s learn the future of intellectual property (for now)…
Have you seen this law student? Seriously.
* Austin Tice, a Georgetown Law student, freelance journalist, and former Marine Corps officer, is missing in Syria. We hope he’s okay. [McClatchy]
* The nightlife lawyer is already back in the news. He’s repping a new high-profile plaintiff: an NYC cop whose foot got run over by some d-bag in a Ferrari. Make it rain! [Jalopnik]
* Former Allen & Overy partner Edward M. De Sear got arrested AGAIN on child pornography charges. We’ll definitely have more on this tomorrow. [The Record]
* I understand wanting to eliminate viral ads targeted at kids, but who would I be without all those old Crossfire, Hungry Hungry Hippos, and “Hey, it could happen!” McDonald’s television ads? [Threat Level / Wired]
* Jurors in Apple v. Samsung have been deliberating for two days now. I scream, you scream, we all scream — for a verdict. [CNET]
* California’s state legislature passed an act that would force law enforcement to get a warrant before gathering GPS or other location-tracking data from cell phones. All you drug dealers, it’s time to re-up on a new burner. [Ars Technica]
* I don’t think Esquire means what you think it means. Seriously. You can’t give yourself the title when your law license is suspended. No one cares if you read the magazine or own land. [WSJ Law Blog]
What. A. Day. Long long ago, in a time before lunch, I again trekked down to San Jose to watch the closing arguments in Patent Super Bowl 2012: Apple v. Samsung. That, and go through the most boring morning of my life, as close to 40 attorneys, dozens of spectators, reporters, and the unseen masses in the overflow room, sat through a reading of 109 pages of jury instructions.
But after lunch, we finally got what we hoped for: four hours of impressive performances from Charles Verhoeven, Bill Lee, and Harold McElhinny. We’ve probably got a year’s worth of Quotes of the Day from this afternoon, but by the end of the day, one phrase, one idea was abundantly clear: “The world is watching.”
Continue reading “Dispatch from Apple v. Samsung Closing Statements: The World is Watching”
We’ve written countless times about the ways that people have tried to get out of jury duty. While some of them have managed to shirk their civic duties, others have been less successful.
In rare (unpublicized) cases, potential jurors have been more than willing to serve their time. But sometimes, real-life courtroom drama meets with television drama featuring plots ripped straight from the headlines — and that’s where things get messy.
But not in this judge’s courtroom….
The hot topics in jury misconduct these days are mostly about jurors who over-share or over-research cases on the internet or social media. Everyone is legitimately concerned about what jurors find online about the cases they hear. Sometimes big-time attorneys even get lambasted by judges for allowing certain information to be published in the media — even though jurors have already been instructed not to look at at any press.
But that doesn’t mean old-school water-cooler gossip has disappeared from the list of headaches uncooperative jurors can cause. In Florida this week, a high-profile, extraordinarily slow-moving murder case was delayed yet again after the judge dismissed the entire jury selection pool because of excessive pick a little talk a little cheep cheep cheep…
Continue reading “Murder Trial Jury Selection Turns into Gossip Girls; Everyone Loses”
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
Also, we have the two below in-house openings:
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