Samsung claims Apple trial tainted

Apple Inc.’s billion-dollar trial victory in August was tainted by the jury foreman’s failure to disclose a lawsuit and his personal bankruptcy, Samsung Electronics Co. said in a request to a judge for the verdict to be thrown out.

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 company said in a filing Tuesday in federal court in San Jose, Calif.

“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.”

On Tuesday, Hogan denied that there was any misconduct, saying the court instructions for potential jurors required disclosure of any litigation they were involved in within the last 10 years — and that the1993 bankruptcy and related litigation involving Seagate fell well outside that time range.

The electrical engineer said the filing has him wondering whether Samsung “let me in the jury just to have an excuse for a new trial if it didn’t go in their favour.”