(Bloomberg) -- Picking a jury for Waymo's lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc. proved surprisingly easy given how hard it could have been to find an unbiased group of people to hear the case in the ride-hailing giant's hometown of San Francisco.
Despite the challenge of weeding out would-be jurors who may have been bombarded by scandalous headlines about Uber over the past year, it took less than five hours Wednesday to seat a panel of 10 people, four women and six men. The trial begins on Monday.
Lawyers agreed before the process started that jurors would be excused for having strong opinions about either company and certain witnesses. About a dozen were dismissed for this reason, after signaling their opinions on a questionnaire. The responses to the questionnaire weren't made public, but U.S. District Judge William Alsup said only one of the opinions that led to a dismissal was a positive one.
One prospective juror was dismissed because he held stock in Google, whose parent is Alphabet Inc. The group who made the jury include a home health-care provider, an AT&T lineman, a citizen from the former Soviet Republic with a background in mechanical engineering, an optician, an accountant for a women's clothier and a former U.S. Air Force radar trouble-shooter who now works for the Veteran's Administration.
To contact the reporter on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg
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