Patent Law

Juror Bias Could Sink Mattel/Bratz Verdict

By Les Weinstein, Michael Young, John Leo Wagner, Eric van Ginkel, and Victoria Pynchon

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog for posting this Order in the Bratz/Mattel Litigation (Barbie-Bratz Juror Booted for Ethnic Slurs). 

Juror No. 8 made grossly inappropriate remarks concerning defendant Isaac Larian based on his ethnicity during jury deliberations. Specifically, Juror No. 8 indicated that her husband, an attorney, has told her about client or clients who are Iranian and who are stubborn, rude, stingy, are thieves, and have stolen other person’s ideas.

Although Juror No. 8 minimized her remarks and insisted that she did not mean to do
anything wrong, the relative consistency and degree of detail of the other jurors who
heard her make the remarks, combined with other factors that lend credibility to the
other jurors’ account of the remarks and not to Juror No. 8, leads the Court to
conclude that Juror No. 8 made the remarks, or something close to the remarks, set
forth above.

The good news in this sorry story is the immediate negative response of the other jurors to these statements.  

As the Court noted:

The juror foreperson immediately admonished Juror No. 8 for making the remarks
and strongly instructed that there was no room in the jury deliberation process for such remarks. Contemporaneously, several other jurors also registered their disapproval with Juror No. 8’s comments, some very emotionally.

One juror indicated that she was afraid that, if Juror No. 8 remained on the jury, she would overcompensate for Juror No. 8's apparent bias and not be fair to Mattel. Another juror indicated she felt uncomfortable continuing to serve with Juror No. 8 after the remarks were made.

Though the Court concluded that Juror 8's comments did not "effect or influence the decision made by the jury," MGA has understandably asked for a new trial. 

Full post as published by IP ADR Blog on July 27, 2008 (boomark / email).