Late Thursday, Apple vs. Samsung Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal denied Samsung’s request that the jury be told that Apple may have also destroyed email evidence.
As noted by The Verge, the rationale and late timing of Samsung’s filing is brought into question in Judge Grewal’s order: “The fact that a timely motion brought by the other side yielded an instruction that could harm the moving party’s chances with the jury, and ‘fairness’ somehow demands a similar instruction as to both parties. Except that it doesn’t.”
From the order:
There is nothing at all unfair about denying relief to one party but not the other when the one but not the other springs into action long after any rational person would say it could have done so. The court has bent itself into a pretzel accommodating the scheduling challenges of this case. But at some point the accommodation must end, lest the hundreds of other parties in civil rights, Social Security, and other cases also presently before the undersigned and presiding judge might reasonably ask: what makes the parties in this patent case so special?
Samsung’s motion was in response to an Apple-won adverse inference jury instruction over Samsung’s email deletion procedures. The Korean company’s internal email system routinely deletes emails after two weeks. Apple proposed that the company didn’t follow its legal burden to preserve evidence relating to the trial.
Judge Grewal said Samsung “conciously disregarded” legal obligations, and ruled the jury should be apprised of the situation.
Samsung then issued its own motion for the same instruction against Apple, even though the Cupertino firm does not have a system in place that routinely destroys email messages.
