Samsung has finally figured out the reason the judge should throw out the $1 billion verdict, and its not because software patents for things like "pinch and zoom," "double-tap to zoom," "bounce back" etc. shouldn't exist in the first place.
BusinessWeek reports that Samsung has filed a request to a judge for the $1 billion verdict favoring Apple to be thrown out as the jury foreman Velvin Hogan failed out to disclose a lawsuit and his personal bankruptcy.
Business Week reports:
Samsung said foreman Velvin Hogan was asked during jury selection whether he’d been involved in lawsuits and didn’t tell the judge that he had filed for bankruptcy in 1993 and had been sued by his former employer, Seagate Technology Inc.
Samsung has a “substantial strategic relationship” with Seagate and the lawyer who filed the complaint against Hogan is married to an attorney who works for the firm that represented Samsung in the trial against Apple, the Suwon, South Korea-based company said in a filing yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California.
“Mr. Hogan’s failure to disclose the Seagate suit raises issues of bias that Samsung should have been allowed to explore,” Samsung said in its request for a new trial. The company also said Hogan’s public statements after the verdict suggest he failed to answer the court’s questions “truthfully” to “secure a seat on the jury.”
Hogan in a phone interview with Business Week said that the court instructions for potential jurors required disclosure of any litigation they were involved in, within the last 10 years. He clarified that since the bankruptcy and related litigation involving Seagate were back in 1993, he did not feel the need to disclose it.
“Had I been asked an open-ended question with no time constraint, of course I would’ve disclosed that,” Hogan said, referring to the bankruptcy and related litigation. “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.”
Hogan said that it was a honor being selected as the juror, especially since the suit was related to his job as an electrical engineer. Jurors had elected him as the foreman based on his experience. He wonders whether Samsung let him in the jury just to have an excuse for a new trial if it didn’t go in their favor.
It seems quite bizaare that Samsung is requesting the verdict to be thrown out for this reason. What do you think? Sound off in the comments.
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