@ Pascal Monett
"Gosh, for $80,000 I think I could be confused as well. For five minutes anyway.
Frankly I am rather appalled at the tactics employed. If you have to lie and cheat to get your point across, my feeling is that your point is not worth being considered anyway."
Firstly, I'm not sure where you are getting the "lie and cheat" from... Are you assuming that the witness was lying when she said that she picked up a Samsung phone by mistake out of a number of phones in the middle of a conference table? If so, why? Is it your opinion (based on what expertise?) that it is absolutely impossible to mistake one phone for another at a glance?
or, is it possible that;
Secondly, you are assuming that paying a consultant for testimony (remember that she is no longer an Apple employee) is necessarily and ONLY paying that person to lie? If so, I'll be interested to see if Samsung pays any outside consultants to testify when it's their turn and whether that will affect your opinion.
Thirdly, I'm assuming that the UK has similar laws regarding perjury to the ones in the US. Lying to the court under oath, even in a civil case, is taken VERY seriously here. You would pretty much have to assume that that $80K -- plus a few more -- would get eaten up in legal fees in defending herself before a criminal, not civil, court. And any lawyer that was found to have suborned a witness like that would stand a VERY good chance of being disbarred. A desperate-enough one might try it in a low-end case, but in a very public, high-profile one like this with lots of eyes watching every move -- not likely.
Fourthly, I'm hoping that no one who is accusing Apple of cheating by paying consultants was in the "I-shouldn't-have-to-serve-jury-duty-because-I'd-lose-MONE-E-E-E-Y-Y-Y!" side of the argument last week. Because that would just be... well... "hypocritical" is such a judgemental word, isn't it...? Personally, I see a difference between providing a professional service (specific expertise in a field with a limited pool of acknowledged experts) and serving a public duty (jury duty, where no specialized knowledge is required to begin with and where there is a large, non-specialized pool from which to choose.) The one where expertise is required and a limited number of experts exist is a different case from one where there is an, essentially, unlimited pool of equally-qualified/unqualified (take your choice) candidates from which to choose. It's supply-and-demand at work.