Influencing Juries in Litigation "Hot Spots"

This Article considers how corporations are using image advertising in litigation “hot spots” as a means of influencing litigation outcomes. It describes how Samsung and other companies advertised in the Eastern District of Texas — a patent litigation “hotspot”— to curry favor with the people who live there, including by sponsoring an ice rink located directly outside the courthouse. To be sure, image advertisements are constitutionally-protected speech, and might even warrant the highest level of protection under the First Amendment when they are not purely commercial in nature. Still, the Article argues, courts should be able to prohibit such advertisements altogether, or at the very least limit their impact through voir dire and discovery, because they threaten the right to an impartial jury guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment.