Samsung has requested the trial verdict which saw Apple being awarded $1 billion in damages be dismissed due to jury foreman Velvin Hogan's personal history.
Hogan failed to disclose to chief Judge Lucy Koh of a lawsuit from his former employer Seagate Technology as well as a personal bankruptcy filing from 1993. Based on the revelation, the Korean firm asked the trial be thrown out.
“Mr. Hogan’s failure to disclose the Seagate suit raises issues of bias that Samsung should have been allowed to explore,” Samsung stated. They also referred to Hogan's statements that were made to media outlets after the verdict; Samsung argues that it represents a sign that he didn't answer the court’s questions “truthfully” in order to “secure a seat on the jury.”
Samsung said its link with Seagate has been a "substantial strategic partnership," as well as referring to the fact that the lawyer who filed the complaint against Hogan nearly two decades ago is reportedly married to an attorney who works for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which is the law firm representing Samsung in their court battle against Apple.
Hogan, however, denied any misconduct to Bloomberg. He stressed that, due to the court's rule of potential jurors required to disclose prior involvement in litigation over the past decade, he didn't have to reveal his lawsuit with Seagate as it occurred more than 10 years ago.
“Had I been asked an open-ended question with no time constraint, of course I would’ve disclosed that,” Hogan added . “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.”
The jury elected Hogan particularly due to his experience as an electrical engineer. "I answered every question the judge asked me” and Samsung “had every opportunity to question me," Hogan stated.
Hogan expressed how he was surprised to find out that Samsung was not aware of the history found in Tuesday's filing. He questions if the company “let [him] in the jury just to have an excuse for a new trial if it didn’t go in their favor.”
If the $1 billion case does ultimately get dismissed, it'd certainly be a further blow to Apple's legal woes. Not only are they facing lawsuits such as the one pertaining to its Passbook app introduced in iOS 6, but they also recently lost their injunction against Samsung's Galaxy Tablet 10.1, with the device's U.S. sales ban subsequently lifted.
