Judge Koh to Apple lawyers: Are you smoking crack?

As court began today Judge Lucy Koh was again exhorting the two sides to find a way to make peace with one another, and her patience with both sides is clearly wearing thin. As Samsung winds down its case today, Apple was getting ready to launch its rebuttal witnesses. Despite having a couple short hours left in its allotted time, Apple presented Koh with a 75 page briefing covering more than 20 potential rebuttal witnesses.

Judge Koh was not amused. She responded in total shock that Apple would even pretend that such a large witness list could be called in their remaining time:

"I mean come on. 75 pages! 75 pages! You want me to do an order on 75 pages” Koh said, “Unless you're smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren't going to be called when you have less than four hours!”

While Apple’s lawyer dead-panned "You're honor, I can assure you, I'm not smoking crack,” they may want to reconsider their strategy. Koh has already warned both sides that they are filing too much paperwork, indicating that she and her staff simply can not keep up with the reams of paper filed by both sides’ giant legal teams.

Koh explicitly warned Apple’s lawyers that there may be consequences for this course of action, indicating that "If it turns out I went through 75 pages for people who are not going to be called, I am going to think of a proper tax for that." Regardless of what Apple’s lawyers are or are not smoking, they may want to rethink their filing if they don’t want to end up losing time, possibly from their closing statements.

source: Cnet