I don't think it's correct to put any evidential weight on the jury's ruling. Conditioning on the simple fact that thier ruling is controversial screens off most of its value.

I disagree. Do we have specific data about the correlation between the controversy of jury rulings, and their accuracy (or some half-decent proxy, like the likelihood of the rulings being sustained in appeal)?

Most of the controversy in this specific case appears to originate from people who have significantly worse access to the factual evidence than the jury; and it's likely to be in the interest of some entities reporting about this case to play up the controversy to attract readers. I don't think there's any strong evidence to be gained from this, and consider the original ruling to still be significant evidence even after taking the controversy into account.