Jury duty stories #4 (the end)

[gordonzola]

The jury selection process was a little mysterious to me. I didn’t expect to make the jury but even more, I didn’t expect the guy who had been run over in a crosswalk to make the jury. Or the woman with the two near-death car accidents. Or the guy with the pending lawsuit against an insurance company. Or that tattoo artist just because of her head-to-to-toe tattoos. We elected her foreperson.

The first thing they did was get rid of the Asians. True, one was pulling the asshole-in-public schtick and another spoke Cantonese, but it was notable.

The whole trial, the judge kept warning us not to talk to anyone about the case, but that after the case was over, we could talk to anyone, including the lawyers. Oh joy! So here we spent 6 days working for $15/day and the lawyers get to use us at no extra charge as test market subjects. It was informal, and I don’t think everyone kept to it, but after our deliberations , as we were waiting to get taken back to court, I got everyone to agree that we’d ask the lawyers for $200 if they wanted to talk to us about our verdict. It’s not like they are working for free.

We gave the plaintiff about $218,000 total. We were unanimous on the past and future medical care issues which made up the bulk of the award and close to unanimous on the pain and suffering etc. claims. It’s a very hard thing to quantify really and even though I was one of two people pushing for more, I actually did respect everyone in that room. Though I actually have bountiful optimism about people in general, I didn’t expect that going in necessarily.

As we were leaving, the plaintiff’s family thanked us and the plaintiff lawyer handed us all letters implying that the defense would try to approach us and get us to sign statements that he could use to appeal the verdict on the grounds of jury misconduct. I wonder if he had more than one letter stashed away depending on what our verdict might be. No one has contacted me yet.

The weirdest thing about the trial? On TV the plaintiff and defendant always sit at different tables with a gap between them. But the whole way through they sat mere inches from each other, so close that they occasionally brushed each others arms. I know it’s a Civil court, but I would have a hard time being civil in that close proximity either with the person who ran me down or a person suing me for half a million dollars.

Comments

[existentialista.livejournal.com]

We elected her foreperson

...right on!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

She was the obvious choice.

[externaltext.livejournal.com]

The first thing they did was get rid of the Asians. True, one was pulling the asshole-in-public schtick and another spoke Cantonese, but it was notable.

i have to go to jury duty at the end of this month and i had two plans to not be selected. one was to say that due to my extreme leftist beliefs, i basically don't support incarceration ever and want to dismantle the prison system. the other was to pretend not to speak any english. after reading your posts on this topic, though, i'm thinking the second might be more effective.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

oh, I was unclear. English was his first language, it was that he would understand the translator and no one else on the jury would. And this was in an earlier post but I didn't re-state it here, both the Plaintiff and Defendent were Chinese-American which, I believe, is why they were offing the Asians. We actually had an incredibly small number, demographically-speaking, of Asians in the random jury pool anyway.

it depends whether the trial is criminal or civil for the first plan. I doubt they'd by the second because they'll ask you your occupation. But Boston... who knows. I think Sf is different than a lot of places in that they don't really care that you're a leftist.

[externaltext.livejournal.com]

oh, i get it. i didn't read all of the posts that carefully, so i missed that it was an asian-involved case. i was like "offing the asians! how rude!"
and yeah, the "no english! really!" thing is mostly just wishful thinking, i guess. we will have to see. i have never done jury duty before so i am pretty curious!

[jwz.livejournal.com]

I guess for a jury of your peers, you'd want to ditch anyone who spoke your language...

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

that irony was lost on nowhere there.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

By the time something like this gets to trial, I expect that it feels like a fight between some lawers and insurance companies, to which you are merely a witness.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

yeah, except that they legally won't tell you if the defendent has insurance.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, but the lawer would not have taken the case unless he knew there was a way to get the money, and believe me, he can ask exactly how much the defendant has, and it is one of the first things asked.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

oh, I believe that. But if the guy has say, $50,000 worth of insurance or $500,000 we don't know. I don't know if the defendant has a house for example, but pretty much every jury in America feels good about taking insurance company money and not as good about taking regular-folks money. Undoubtedly that's why we can't know.

I don't believe we can assume he has that much insurance.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

He should, and if he has either assets or income, he most certainly should, who wants to lose their house or have a 25% (before tax) wage garnishment for years, or simply leave someone hurt with no compensation? It is not that much money to boost your premium from the minimums (which are far too low).

[chitinous.livejournal.com]

In the car crash case I served on last year, the defendent's lawyer was in-house counsel for an insurance company, so even though we weren't told outright, it was pretty obvious that he was insured.

[chitinous.livejournal.com]

defendAnt.

[thisisthenow.livejournal.com]

I'm curious: was the deliberation mostly about how much money for the plaintiff? was the guilt of the defendant that obvious? I'm also wondering where the $218k figure came from...you were able to quantify it somehow!

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

negligence and many medical bills was stipulated to in the begining, it was always a matter of how much money would be paid.

I don't have the actual numbers available to me but a certain amount was for past medical bills and past attendant care (some of which had been paid by the city/state so the numbers skew weirdly), roughly $30,000. future medical and attendant care etc. was about $100,000. Then there was $90,000 for pain and suffering etc. That was the amount I felt should have been higher. If she had been younger, the amount likely would have been higher because she, quite frankyly, has less years left to be in pain. This was not the sole way of determining the amount, but it comes out to about $10,000/yr (part past/part future).

[lapsed.livejournal.com]

That's probably better than they'd get from medical malpractice unless it was pretty gross negligence.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

and yes, we quantified it because that is the only thing we can do. No one felt satisfied that this was "justice".

[thisisthenow.livejournal.com]

I meant you were able to quantify a number for the cash settlement. I was curious how you came up with the actual number. Thanks!

[starfiend.livejournal.com]

what's the "asshole-in-public schtick"?

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Of that $218,000, how much do the lawyers get?

My mom was threatened with a suit because of a traffic accident (which was juridically her fault -- moral of the story, NEVER pull forward out of a parking space you're meant to back out of, whether it looks clear or not), but when they investigated my mother's assets, she had so few that the other insurance company settled out of court. It doesn't even seem to have much affected my mother's insurance rates, which I don't at all understand.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how much the lawyers made, but I imagine a very good chunk. i could be wrong, but I think the plantiff's lawyer usually works on a contingency and the defense by the hour. But a lot of money, that's for sure.

[slipkid.livejournal.com]

plaintiffs' attorneys usually get a third plus costs and 40 percent plus costs if it goes to trial. at least that's how it is usually tiered.

FIGHT THE POWER!

[dirtylibrarian.livejournal.com]

It’s a very hard thing to quantify really and even though I was one of two people pushing for more, I actually did respect everyone in that room. Though I actually have bountiful optimism about people in general, I didn’t expect that going in necessarily.

I had forgotten, but I think this was one of the things I loved best about jury duty...that everyone on the jury was really trying to do their best to do the right thing, and we working together, and having really intelligent conversations about the information we had been given. You don't get that with strangers often enough!

[kest]

I worked for awhile out of college doing IT stuff at a forensic economist's firm. They did expert witnessing and charts and calculations for personal injury and wrongful death cases. I worked on a piece of software that included a 'wrongful death wizard', and scanned lots of case studies that quantified human life quite succinctly.