Northern District of California San Francisco and Oakland Divisions

Northern District of California San Francisco and Oakland Divisions The United States District Del Norte Court of the Northern District of California is comprised of three divisions: San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. This report focuses Humboldt on the San Francisco and Oakland Divisions. The San Francisco and Oakland courthouses call jurors from the following counties: San Mendocino Francisco, San Mateo, Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Lake Alameda, Contra Costa, Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma Napa Humboldt, and Del Norte Counties. With a Santa Rosa Napa Petaluma population of 1,643,700, Alameda County is Contra Costa Marin the largest county in the venue, representing San Rafael San Francisco San Francisco Daly City Alameda roughly 29 percent of the venue’s total San Mateo Redwood City population. Juror lists are pulled from voter San Mateo registration rolls and records from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, and are paid $50 for each day of service. The Northern District of California is notable venue for intellectual property law, as it largely pioneered the streamlining of procedural rules, which enabled cases to move quickly through the system. Although many plaintiffs have sought to file elsewhere, where success rates and damage awards tend to be higher, the district still has a significant patent caseload, owing in part to the numerous technology companies incorporated locally. As a result, the rules for these kinds of cases tend to have been extensively litigated and are quite rigid. In the wake of TC Heartland v. Krafts Foods, in which the Supreme Court ruled that patent lawsuits must be filed in a jurisdiction where a defendant resides or committed acts of infringement, many plaintiffs may be forced to file here. Generally speaking, that is good news for defendants, although the rules of the Northern District of California tend to be more restrictive and might require a greater time commitment (the median time to trial is 2.7 years) as compared to the Eastern District of Texas or the District of Delaware. But jurors in this venue generally have the education to critically analyze cases and their higher incomes tend to be predictive of lower damage awards. www.thefocalpoint.com | © The Focal Point LLC 2020 The Northern District and the rest of California became formally integrated into the United States in 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War. That same year, the region’s fame and population exploded as a result of the California gold rush. The Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1868, had its westernmost stop in Oakland, which by the mid-19th century had become an important California seaport. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 led to a large influx of refugees to the East Bay. Trade and investments poured in from the east coast, and the region continued to thrive throughout the mid-19th century. San Francisco remained the largest American city west of the Mississippi River until 1920, when it was outpaced by Los Angeles. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a huge influx of Chinese immigrants, who came first to work in the gold mines and later on the Transcontinental Railroad. To this day, San Francisco has one of the largest Chinese populations outside of China. Many large corporations still operating today were founded during San Francisco’s mid-19th century population explosion, including Wells Fargo Bank, Levi Strauss & Co., and Ghirardelli Chocolate Company. Until the late 19th century, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties were largely rural areas, comprised of farms and orchards. However, with the rise in population in the early 20th century and the increase in public transportation options, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties became suburban feeders for nearby San Francisco. In the early 20th century, San Francisco developed into a powerful financial center. In fact, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed after the stock market crash of 1929. During the Great Depression that followed, San Franciscans used city bonds to build the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, both of which are now world-renowned. Throughout World War II, San Francisco was the main point of departure and supply point for the war in the Pacific. The Bay Bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco was completed in 1936, and by the early 1970’s, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) connected the East Bay to San Francisco and the San Francisco Peninsula, providing Bay Area residents with even more commuting options. A recent study of San Francisco employees found that over 265,000 workers commute to San Francisco County from outlying counties, and 45 percent of these commuters come from Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. During the dotcom-boom of the 1990s, software companies and entrepreneurs flocked to San Francisco, reshaping the city’s social and economic landscape. With high-tech hub Silicon Valley located just 35 miles south of the center of San Francisco, the venue continues to be heavily influenced by the tech industry and very hospitable to entrepreneurial businesses. www.thefocalpoint.com | © The Focal Point LLC 2020 The city of San Francisco comprises about 16 percent of the venue’s population. With over 880,000 residents, it is the fifteenth largest city in the United States. It is also one of the most diverse U.S. cities: Approximately 34 percent of its citizens were born outside of the U.S., and nearly 112,000 are not U.S. citizens. This trend has slowed in recent years and a recent study indicates that the ethinic diversity in the city is reversing. A recent study by University of Southern California scholars, found that by 2040 white residents are expected to outnumber minority residents in San Francisco, while minority residents will make up the majority in surrounding counties like Alameda and Contra Costa. Approximately 40 percent of San Francisco County residents speak a language other than English at home. San Francisco ordiances require three foregin languages (Chinese, Spanish, and Tagalog) to be used in addition to English for official city interactions with the public. The area experiences a steady influx of immigration from both Asian and Latin American countries. San Francisco is one of the nation’s largest “sanctuary cities”, which have policies in place to help protect undocumented immigrants. Around 21 percent of the venue’s residents are Asian, and this figure jumps to 34 percent in San Francisco County alone. In fact, about one in five residents of San Francisco speak an Asian language at home. The region also has a large LGBT community, with approximately 6 percent of its residents identifying as such. Moreover, San Francisco has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any city in the U.S. Population San Francisco/Oakland Division California Statewide Total Population 5,598,292 38,982,847 White 44.5% 37.9% Hispanic 22.3% 38.8% Black 6.2% 5.5% Asian 21.4% 13.9% The educational attainment in this venue as a whole and San Francisco County in particular significantly exceeds the statewide and national averages. While just fewer than 40 percent of California residents have a high school degree or less, only 28.9 percent of residents in the division do. Moreover, 32.6 percent of California residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 44.6 percent in the venue as a whole and 57.1 percent in San Francisco. There is also great diversity within the venue. For example, in the city of Oakland, 17.5 percent of the population does not have a high school diploma. In comparison, only 3.8 percent of the population in neighboring Berkeley has not graduated high school. As the home of the University of California, Berkeley, it is not surprising that 73.2 percent of Berkeley residents have a bachelor’s and/or post- graduate degree. In addition to UC Berkeley, the venue is home to a number of colleges and universities including: California State University, East Bay; College of Alameda; Mills College; San Francisco State University; University of California, San Francisco; University of California Hastings College of Law; and University of Northern California. www.thefocalpoint.com | © The Focal Point LLC 2020 Education San Francisco/Oakland Division California Statewide High School or Less 28.6% 38.1% Some College or Associate’s Degree 26.8% 29.3% Bachelor’s Degree 26.7% 20.4% Graduate or Professional Degree 17.9% 12.2% Since the social revolutions of the 1960s, San Francisco County has been a Democratic stronghold. Indeed, the last Republican presidential nominee to win San Francisco was Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. Fifty-eight percent of voters are registered Democrats, and 7 percent are registered Republicans. Despite its liberal slant, San Francisco also has the highest percentage of unaffiliated voters of any county in California (31%). The rest of the venue is also solidly Democratic with the exception of tiny Del Norte County, which tends to vote Republican in both presidential and congressional elections. A few affluent areas of Contra Costa County—such as the city of Danville—have more registered Republicans than Democrats. 2016 Presidential Election Clinton Trump Alameda County 79.3% 14.9% Contra Costa County 68.9% 25.4% Del Norte County 37.2% 54.8% Humboldt County 58.3% 32.4% Lake County 47.8% 44.1% Marin County 78.8% 15.9% Mendocino County 60.4% 31.2% Napa County 64.8% 29.6% San Francisco County 85.5% 9.4% San Mateo County 76.4% 18.7% Sonoma County 70.7% 22.8% The venue is not only one of the most highly educated parts of California, it is also one of the wealthiest and most expensive.

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