Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. turned to some high-stakes legal housekeeping Monday, in one of the companies' last chances to weigh in on nitty-gritty procedural matters before closing arguments Tuesday.

Lawyers for both companies told Judge Lucy Koh that their chief executives conferred by phone one more time to attempt to resolve their differences, fulfilling her last-minute request. As expected, they said that they failed to reach a resolution, however, meaning the case will proceed to closing arguments Tuesday.

One of the most contentious issues of the day was whether jurors will be told that Samsung and Apple failed to live up to their obligations to preserve evidence for the trial, which is entering its fourth week.

Judge Koh tentatively ordered that the nine jurors will be told that both Apple and Samsung didn't live up to their obligations to preserve evidence and could decide to weigh that in their decision. An earlier judge ruled that Samsung didn't live up to its obligation, but Judge Koh said she thought that Apple didn't either and that the jurors would be told the same thing about both.

'You are equally culpable,' Judge Koh said to lawyers for both companies.

In explaining her thinking, Judge Koh questioned why certain Apple executives, such as Senior Vice President Scott Forstall, didn't receive notices to retain documents until later than other executives.

A lawyer for Apple argued that Mr. Forstall was given a notice when the patent he was listed on as a creator became part of the case. 'There is absolutely no evidence of any documents destroyed at Apple,' she said.

A lawyer for Samsung said that if the company is dinged on the point, Apple should be, too.

Lawyers also aired their objections to various line items in the instructions that Judge Koh will read to the jury Tuesday. The instructions tell the jury how to apply the law and what they should and shouldn't consider in determining matters such as whether a design patent is valid.

Both sides were also scheduled to discuss Judge Koh's tentatively ordered jury-verdict form, the worksheet that jurors will fill out to issue their verdict and which asks them to indicate whether devices infringe particular patents, among other things.

The issues the companies bickered over include language related to consumers' confusion over purchases, one of the things jurors consider in determining whether Samsung's designs infringed Apple's intellectual property.

The minutiae matter. Lawyers for either side could use issues such as juror confusion as potentialammunition to dispute the verdict.

One issue the two companies resolved between themselves, at least tentatively, was how to handle Apple's concerns that jurors may inadvertently update disputed phones they will be given to study during deliberations, modifying some of the features in dispute. Lawyers agreed that removing the wireless service SIM cards for devices on AT&T Inc. T -0.75% and T-Mobile USA should address the concern.