This is something you'd really prefer to get through your entire legal career without having to say.
From a report today in Ars Technica:
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA—Testimony in the giant Apple v. Samsung patent trial is entering its final hours, and nerves are fraying on all sides. US District Judge Lucy Koh laid into lawyers this morning, demanding to know how she could be expected to go through 75 pages of objections to witnesses that she doesn't believe will have time to testify in any case.
"You want me to do an order on 75 pages tonight? When, unless you're smoking crack, you know that these witnesses are not going to be called?" Koh shouted at Apple lawyers. "Who is going to call all these witnesses when you have less than four hours left?"
"Your honor, first of all, I'm not smoking crack," said Apple lawyer Bill Lee. "We have timed it out."
Judge Koh has limited each side to 25 total hours, not including opening statements or closing arguments, and at the time of this exchange Apple had just informed her it had 20 (one source says 22) witnesses it still planned to call in less than four hours. That's at most 12 minutes per witness, and since there are always going to be objections and other delays, you can see why Judge Koh was starting to have crack-smoking suspicions. Obviously she also had no desire to stay up all night ruling on written objections relating to witnesses who may not even testify.
Apple's lawyers bravely persisted, saying they had done a "time test" to make sure they could finish on time. If we see lightning bolts (or Apple lawyers) coming out of the courthouse windows tomorrow morning, I guess we'll know.
