Word: memorex
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...First Congress proposed the Seventh Amendment, guaranteeing the right to a jury trial "in Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars." But back in 1789 they could never have imagined anything like Memorex...
...decide whether IBM had monopolized various markets claimed in Memorex's $900 million antitrust suit, jurors needed a detailed understanding of things like "reverse engineering," "cross elasticity of supply" and "subordinated debentures." The trial lasted 96 days. The jury heard 87 witnesses and examined some 3,000 exhibits. After deliberating for 19 more days, it could not reach a unanimous verdict. Federal Judge Samuel Conti declared a mistrial. He then ruled in favor of IBM, though the jury had favored Memorex by 9 to 2. Suspecting that the jurors were baffled by the whole case, Judge Conti began asking...
...appeal, Memorex is what is known as a "big case": a multimillion-dollar lawsuit that involves mountains of evidence and may take months or years to resolve. Increasingly common, such civil cases pose a dilemma. They are generally within the broad definition given by the U.S. Supreme Court to "Suits at common law." Thus they come under the jury-trial guarantee of the Seventh Amendment. (State courts are not bound by the Seventh, but most states have similar guarantees.) Such cases add to the burdens on the already overloaded courts. More important, if the jury cannot understand the issues...
...chief justices. "Overwhelmingly, a great many of the people best qualified to sit on juries are those most eager to escape jury duty." Usually they succeed. With excuses ranging from "bad sleeping habits" to "poor frame of mind," every potential juror who did not want to sit through the Memorex case was excused. There were 118 in all. In many long cases, anyone who cannot get away from work for months at a time or who earns more than jury duty pays-$30 a day plus some extras-will opt out. That leaves, says Stanford Law School Professor William Baxter...
...novel. At a glance, it may seem another tour of Joan Didion's empty existential horizons -damaged people failing to communicate in a dry land. But Schwartz's central character, Paul Kramer, renders his past imperfect with a poignancy that gives the novel a solid grounding. His Memorex ear for dialogue and his unblinking self-examination provide the basis for a muted, moral judgment on life as it was lived along the San Andreas Fault in the good old days of Watergate. If Paul's relationship with Emily, the ventriloquist lady, remains a trifle too enigmatic, that...