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There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)Posted Aug 27, 2012 21:55 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)In reply to: There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw) by Kluge Parent article: There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw)
>> If it's a matter of "the undisputed facts are this, how does the law apply", it's something that the Judge is supposed to decide.'
> This case is complicated by the fact that the Judge is deciding *which* fact the jury will be evaluating. And that decision will often decide the outcome.
Agreed, but if the two sides don't disagree on a fact, then the Jury should be informed of the fact if it affects their deliberations (for example, when determining the amount of a penalty), but there's nothing that they need to decide related to that fact.
Sometimes a fact becomes "undisputed" at the end of closing arguments. One side may claim some fact, and if the other side doesn't present any contradictory evidence, that fact is assumed to be proven. This came up during the Google/Oracle case where there were some things that Google decided not to spend time arguing, and at the end of the trial Oracle filed a motion to have the Judge declare those items decided as there were no facts in dispute (and the motion was granted)
In any case, Jurors are not supposed to be introducing evidence or providing testimony on 'how things work'. The fact that in this case, reports are saying that the Jury Foreman did exactly that doesn't indicate that the Jury deliberations need to be more interactive, it indicates that the Jury foreman was doing something that he was not supposed to be doing.
Yes, Juror's have the option of sending a question to the Judge, but since that goes through the foreman, it really doesn't work in this case.
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There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw) Posted Aug 28, 2012 4:25 UTC (Tue) by Kluge (guest, #2881) [Link]
>Agreed, but if the two sides don't disagree on a fact, then the Jury should be informed of the fact if it affects their deliberations (for example, when determining the amount of a penalty), but there's nothing that they need to decide related to that fact.
Yes. I'm certainly in favor of the bias being toward giving the jurors more information, not less.
>In any case, Jurors are not supposed to be introducing evidence or providing testimony on 'how things work'.
It sounds like the jury foreman did cross a line in this case. But jury decisions will inevitably be informed by the knowledge and experience of the jurors. Which is why counsel are given so many opportunities to exclude potential jurors. I can't imagine why Samsung didn't bounce this guy.
>Yes, Juror's have the option of sending a question to the Judge, but since that goes through the foreman, it really doesn't work in this case.
I think that interfering with another juror's desire send a question to the judge would be an even grosser violation than "advising" the jurors on patent law.
My point was that it would be worthwhile to allow jurors to make requests for additional *evidence*, not merely clarifications of points of law, as is currently the case. While this would certainly have downsides, I think it would be preferable to the current "management" of the jurors.
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw) Posted Aug 28, 2012 6:09 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
actually, during the trial the Juror's can send questions to the Judge. A couple years ago when I was on a drunk driving case, I did exactly that, and after the next break there was testimony on exactly what I had asked about.
This was a question to an expert witness.
However, remember that as much as you may want to know something, there may be legal reasons why it's not allowed to matter.
Again in the drunk driving case, while the Jury was deliberating, one Juror mentioned that she wished that she knew why the defendant didn't take the stand, and several of us pointed out that the Judge had told us that we weren't allowed to speculate on that. There are a LOT of landmines out there if the Jury starts investigating.
a Grand Jury is a different story, they are empowered to do exactly that, but they don't decide that someone is guilty, they only decide that someone is likely enough to be guilty that the state is allowed to file charges against the person.
you really don't want the people directing the investigation to be the ones deciding guilt.
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw) Posted Aug 28, 2012 17:28 UTC (Tue) by Kluge (guest, #2881) [Link]
>actually, during the trial the Juror's can send questions to the Judge. A couple years ago when I was on a drunk driving case, I did exactly that, and after the next break there was testimony on exactly what I had asked about.
Wow. I had no idea that such things happened. I thought that jurors were only allowed to ask about evidence already introduced and points of law. I wonder how general this is in US jurisdictions.
>There are a LOT of landmines out there if the Jury starts investigating.
True. But as long as jury questions are mediated by the judge, it doesn't seem like that much of a problem (except for the judge, that is).
There's a Verdict in Apple v. Samsung (Groklaw) Posted Aug 28, 2012 18:31 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you can ask anything you want, it may be that the Judge decides not to do anything with the request, but you can ask :-)
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