It was recently discovered that Samsung lawyer Susan Estrich, who represented the company in Apple vs. Samsung, did not have proper licensing to practice law in the suit’s jurisdiction of the Northern District of California. The whole ordeal adds up to be another mistake in the South Korean company’s case management. According to the case’s official minutes, Estrich, a law professor at the University of Southern California and Fox News commentator, was part of Tuesday’s hearing regarding evidence spoliation despite lacking a notice of appearance and more importantly not being admitted to the Northern District of California bar.
The whole issue presiding Judge Lucy Koh’s previous order, in which she said “All trial lawyers must make appearances in this case and must be admitted in this District.” While Estrich said she presented the so called “me too” motion in good faith, the Court may still decide to sanction Samsung for the oversight. It was Judge Paul Grewal who first questioned the attorney on the matter, as Estrich confessed that the court records were correct and took full blame, stating that she thought she had already been admitted to the district since 1986. In reality, Estrich is only licensed to practice in the Central District of California according to Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents. To help fix the situation, the attorney “immediately applied for and [has] been admitted to practice before the District Court of the Northern District of California.”
Estrich released a statement in which she wants “the Court not [to] hold these inadvertent omissions on [her] part against the merits of [her] client’s case.” When it comes to her appearance on Tuesday, Estrich said her current law firm, Quinn Emanuel, asked her to argue the evidence spoliation claims on Saturday due to increased pressure on the team’s other members. The adverse inference jury instruction claims Samsung is being held to evidence spoliation standards over the company’s automatic email deletion protocols, a system that it argues is similar to email deletion steps taken by the Cupertino California company.
This step along with the fact that the company recently leaked excluded trial documents to the press certainly isn’t a good thing for Samsung. We’ll have to see how things turn out as the Apple vs. Samsung trial continues.
Source: FOSS Patents via AppleInsider
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