As part of my expert witness slavery to the world of patent litigation, I recently reviewed the transcript from a five-day trial.
Part of the first day’s transcript covers jurors attempting to be excused from what was promised to be a single week of jury duty.
- Teacher saying that she wanted to present for the first day of school. Success!
- Medical office manager who is responsible for transporting children to school. Failure.
- Woman with “extreme anxiety”. Success! Not only that, but her plea to be excuse was expedited above most of the others. The judge’s only question for her: “you are in a lot of discomfort about being here?”
- Bartender who needs to work and get tips to survive financially. Failure.
- Person who lives one hour away and will have to stay in a hotel to make serving on the jury practical. Failure. (Some of your tax dollars will be used to pay for that hotel, however.)
- Mom who says that she has to drop off and pick up an 8-year-old at school while the father works from home in an inflexible call center environment. Success!
- Person who had planned a vacation and had already bought a plane ticket for the trip. Success! (offer to show the judge an email proving the plane ticket purchase was refused)
The surviving jurors received an explanation of what the case was about and, before the attorneys on both sides could give opening arguments, watched the following video:
The action had started at 9 am and the above items filled the time until the lunch break just after noon.
It feels as though some of this stuff could have been done via Zoom or email on the preceding business day. Jurors who were destined to be excused could have avoided coming in, spreading COVID-19, etc. On the other hand, how would you be sure that jurors were paying attention to a YouTube video if they weren’t in the courtroom?
Served as juror for an entire week in 2021. I doubt I would have paid as close attention via Zoom. Our deliberations lasted over 4 hours over 2 sessions as judge asked us to resume when we were unable to reach a unanimous verdict. Would have been quite difficult over Zoom.
Jury selection the first morning was a real education. The excuses some came up with strained credibility. The judge let every single one of them go, though. (Things like travel/surgery had already been cleared ahead of time, so normally folks with an ordinary conflict would already have been given a later/earlier date to appear.) There were other jurors who requested privacy when pleading with judge not to serve, so we were unable to hear their stories while they spoke with earphones in place for the judge, attorneys & the prospective juror. But what judge would even want people who were so averse to spending time this way???
(and every single person requesting privacy was dismissed, too)
A fairly reliable way to get out of jury duty – and never be inviyed back – is to show awareness of possibility of jury nullification.
“Your honor, I’m looking forward to jury duty. I don’t believe in imaginary property so I’ll do my best to make sure the patent holder loses.”
Wouldn’t that virtually guarantee exclusion from the jury? Or would they just assign the person to some other trial?
I don’t think they can reassign a juror to another trial by the time this kind of questioning rolls around. I wonder what the judge and lawyers would say if the potential juror says “I’m so glad that I’ve been assigned to a software patent trial because I spent the whole weekend reading the collected works of Richard M. Stallman regarding how “every software patent is harmful” (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fighting-software-patents.en.html ).
I was present at this thing once (they filled the bench before they got to me), and from what I saw one of the easiest way was to declare strong preference for one of the sides.
The case was about a veteran suing small business (!) for wrongful termination. In jury selections “all my family is in the military”, “I’m a small business owner” or “running small business is so hard it should be able to fire anyone” – instant dismissal. I guess so much for the “jury of your peers”, lol.
The Brits got rid of jury trials for patent cases about 40 years ago along with jury trials for most civil cases. They most of the rest of the world have it right — it is quite ridiculous for an elementary school teacher or a bar tender or a postal worker to be deciding if this infringes that, i.e. which expert is correct. Though the lawyers as well as the assorted hangers on like judges, court personal and expert witnesses love jury trials because jurors are a wild card — which encourages litigation & gives these people, unlike the jurors, something lucrative to do.
Being juror on a patent infringement case is a nightmare. It has no purpose but making money for lawyers. Each of the millions of random gootube videos getting copyright strikes for random sounds must be equivalent to what’s being done in a patent case.
I would just say I still don’t care about Black Lives Matter!
For criminal trial say: “Your Honor – don’t worry – this case will be over quickly because I can tell if someone is guilty just by looking at them.”
I got out of a trial by saying I was a Law Enforcement Officer. The case was about someone who assaulted a cop and the defense rejected me thinking I would be biased against him. I wouldn’t have been. If he had a good reason to assault a cop (cop was harming a small child or dog) I would accept that.