Jurors deadlock in $1B lawsuit against Microsoft
Associated Press, U.S. | Sat, 12/17/2011 10:03 AM
A federal jury on Friday failed to reach a verdict in a company's $1 billion antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. in a case so important to the computer giant that it put Bill Gates on the stand for two days last month.
Novell Inc. of Utah sued the software giant in 2004, claiming Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product.
Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.
The trial began two months ago with jurors getting the case on Wednesday. After much confusion, and some perplexing questions from the panel, they told U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz they were deadlocked by early Friday evening.
He repeatedly asked them if they could keep trying.
"This has been a very long and expensive case," Motz told the panel.
Novell attorneys pleaded with Motz to give the panel just one more day. In the end, however, the 12 jurors told the judge they were "hopelessly" deadlocked, and they later told lawyers a single holdout refused to vote in Novell's favor.
