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Google won’t Google jury pool

RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers

Published: May 20, 2016

In the 2003 Gene Hackman/ Dustin Hoffman legal thriller Runaway Jury, based on the John Grisham novel, much of the moviegoing world was introduced to the profession of jury research.

In that well-received film, the audience was taken behind the scenes of a firm that specialized in researching, and finding weaknesses in, individual members of a jury. Since it was an American film, the good guys won (not the jury researchers).

The year 2003, of course, was long before social media. Researching social media has to make the lives of jury researchers easier, one would think. But now, judges are getting involved in the question of whether or not jury venire members should be subject to social media research, and funny, techie things are happening.

An ABA advisory said that this information is fair game, as long as it is public anyway, and that judges can set their own limits.

The Wall Street Journal’s law blog is reporting that in one of the biggest copyright cases in history—involving Google and Oracle--the question of jury research via social media is front and center. Oracle is seeking billions in damages from Google for Google appropriating Oracle’s Java language into Android. Big case.

The trial is in the Northern District of California (Oracle v. Google; No. C 10-03561 WHA), where Judge William Haskell Alsup just issued an “ORDER RE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA SEARCHES OF JURORS”.

Yep. That’s the first one of those I can remember seeing anywhere.

How did the judge come to deliver that order? Both sides had requested short jury questionnaires that had the clear intent of facilitating access to the potential jurors’ social media accounts. Beyond that, Google, of course, is capable of mining juror’s internet searches (but stated that they wouldn’t).

Judge Alsop decided to take the bull by the horns.

Essentially, the judge gave the parties two choices. The first was to not conduct social media searches of potential jurors at all. The second was to allow the searches but to disclose that fact to the venire. (After that disclosure, I’m assuming, the venire would have spent the next few hours deleting their Facebook and Twitter accounts).

The judge’s eventual order was a compromise, holding that, at the “outset of jury selection,” both sides will tell the prospective jurors the exact extent to which they will access those social media accounts, and for what purpose (especially monitoring juror activity during trial).

Ahh-- I can hear those ‘delete” buttons clicking all the way from California to here in Ohio.


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