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Conflicted Judges Are Classier With English Accents
An anonymous reader writes "Remember The Right Honourable Professor Sir Robin Jacob, Retired Lord Justice, who staged a temporary comeback on the bench of the England and Wales Court of Appeals last fall? He's the one who required Apple to publicly retract its claims that Samsung copied the iPad and imposed sanctions on Cupertino when he concluded Tim Cook's lawyers hadn't fully complied. He has now made worldwide headline news again because he signed up as a Samsung expert witness at the U.S. International Trade Commission. Samsung says he was hired by its law firm, not the company, but the ITC filing says 'Sir Robin Jacob working on behalf of Samsung.' His clerk issued a statement according to which Sir Robin had no idea of Samsung's desire to hire him before January — two months after he gave Apple a blast. Leading legal blogs agree that there is no evidence any law was violated, but they suspect that 'the general issue of what engagements retired judges are permitted to accept will be very much up for discussion' and that this was 'a less than savvy public relations move by Samsung' because it casts doubt on the widely-noticed ruling in its favor. As one of them puts it, in the U.K. you 'never know if the judge might be looking for a new job,' so you better 'make sure [you] have fat rolls of cash spilling out of [your] pockets' in front of a U.K. judge."
Yes, it does. And as a judge, he should avoid "looking bad." Reverse the position: imagine that Judge Lucy Koh (you know, the one who awarded a big-ass judgement against Samsung here in the US) 'retires,' and goes to work in Apple's legal department two months later.
Funny you should mention that. Judge Koh actually did do work for Apple before she became a judge. Are you suggesting she should have recused herself?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
It is simply untrue that he retired two months ago. He retired in 2011 - he had to make an application to retire and have that application accepted. He was then _asked_ to return to the bench for the Samsung case because of his expertise, because retired judges can be asked to do that in their field of expertise.
So his retirement didn't happen in some convenient window between ruling for Samsung and then working for Samsung at all, which upsets your conspiracy theory interpretation apple cart a bit, does it not?
Which is not to mention that he's not in Samsung's employ at all, but has been contracted by their law firm. To provide advice. In a case in an unrelated area. In a different legal jurisdiction. At an ordinary consulting rate.
This is a lot of shit designed to attract this kind of aspersion on a judge's character, all kicked off by a dubious post by Florian fucking Mueller for Christ's sake. The summary has conflated a bunch of articles, some evenhanded and some not, into an allegation that Jacob is a 'conflicted judge', and that his expert consulting work for a law firm hired by Samsung is some sort of kickback.
Can we not try to actually understand the situation before we assume that it's simple, lazy corruption?
Captcha: retrofit.