Nine Good Persons and True

The Apple-Samsung verdict is in after surprisingly quick 22-hour deliberations [bold added]:

Nine jurors delivered a sweeping victory to Apple Inc. in a high-stakes court battle against Samsung Electronics Co., awarding the Silicon Valley company $1.05 billion in damages and providing ammunition for more legal attacks on its mobile-device rivals.

Jurors Friday found that Samsung infringed all but one of the seven patents at issue in the case—a patent covering the physical design of the iPad. They found all seven of Apple's patents valid—despite Samsung's attempts to have them thrown out. They also decided Apple didn't violate any of the five patents Samsung asserted in the case.

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that the result was a "hometown" verdict. Apple is one of the largest employers in the Valley and is its most admired and successful company.

That assumption, however, wouldn't do justice to the efforts of the nine-person panel. The Journal profiles some of them:

Manuel Illagan, marketer, circuit board company
Velvin Hogan, video-compression expert
Peter Catherwood, AT&T product manager
David Dunn, cycling shop worker
Aarti Mathur, payroll administrator, IT startups

Just the organization of the task was impressive. How would you fare, dear reader, if you had been called? The WSJ graphic below (click to enlarge) lists the items that had to be decided:

Your humble observer is an Apple shareholder who will experience a pop to his investment because of the verdict. But it's not the monetary benefit--which is likely to be ephemeral--but the process that is cause for rejoicing. In an era of specialized knowledge, twelve good men nine good persons and true showed not only that they were relevant but why they are the backbone of the American system of justice. © 2012 Stephen Yuen