The Hatchet Jurist Strikes Again!

Since I'm on self-imposed bed rest, I'm not outside pulling weeds. Today would be a good day for it, too, after all that rain came down yesterday! My plants look pretty happy. However, I feel a little bruised and skittish. If I'm a double high risk pregnancy and if amnios are supposed to be somewhat risky, I'll hang for a day or so and take it easy. Weeds will still be there in another day.

That's my theory and I'm stickin' with it!

So! Jury duty! As I mentioned last Monday, I was selected. Heck, I was called up in the very first batch of folks for voir dire. Looks like I'm just not offensive enough in any particular area to chuck me off the jury, either. I keep thinking when they hear my husband is a lawyer that will end it, but nope! Maybe if he was a Personal Injury lawyer?

The case is Civil, a car accident. In this accident, the plaintiff was going straight and the defendant was turning left.

According to the letter of the law that makes him automatically negligent. There's so much more involved, though, that you know it's not going to be black and white. If it was, they wouldn't be in court, they'd have settled. And let me tell you, from what I saw, they should have settled.

Here are some things that I learned from this case, that I thought you, too, could benefit from:

1. Never get in a car accident.
2. If you are unable to avoid 1, then make sure it's just a simple fender-bender.
3. If you are unable to avoid 2, then make sure you go to the hospital in the ambulance.
4. Be certain that you follow your medical doctor's instructions to the letter. If he/she gives you a prescription to go see assorted therapists or counselors, do that right away.
5. Juries (at least this one) have very little respect for/place value in alternative medicine. Especially if it's still not working months after your accident.
6. It's your responsibility to mitigate damages to yourself by seeking appropriate medical care after an accident. To not do so, and then to sue the other party, makes you look like a flake. Or a gold digger. Neither of which increases jury sympathy for your plight.
7. If your lawyer starts using big emotional phrases at the beginning, middle and end of the trial and never checks to see if it works with the jury, you are in a world of hurt. Your lawyer's actions will not instill a sense of sympathy in the jurists for you. They will instead begin to detest your lawyer.
8. As part of voir dire, instead of taking time to ask a dumb-ass question about inconsequential issues, your lawyer should instead focus on the jury and their potential biases. For instance, if your lawyer doesn't establish that everyone in the box believes in the right to sue and recover damages, the biased jurist that you miss is probably going to be trouble for your side during deliberations.
9. If your lawyer makes a point of saying, repeatedly, that he has hearing loss and expects this to be either a) funny to the jury or b) instill sympathy in them, then he'd be wrong.
10. Jurists don't actually care how much expert witnesses are paid. That's their job.
11. If your client is really into alternative medicine and you suspect that may not fly with a traditional jury, be sure to hire your owned damned expert medical witness. Someone that can take all of the fluffy data and turn it into serious data. Otherwise, the defense just has to have their experts poke a few holes in the fluffy data and watch all the credibility run out.
12. The difference between probability and possibility is all the difference in the world to a civil case. You've got to make sure you paint a big clear picture for the jury, including drawing up a bloody timeline, if that's what it takes, to say that A connects with B and thus C. Expecting the jury to flip through hundreds and hundreds of pages of medical evidence and expecting them to make your case for you in deliberations is foolish.

In the end, after a week of testimony and 6 hours of deliberations, we found for the plaintiff but had substantially reduced what we would allow her to recover because they just hadn't drawn enough solid conclusions between her damages and the present car accident. There was a strong possibility that it was all related, but since we weren't all 51% convinced, their case was damaged. Because the plaintiff never seemed to consistently follow her medical doctor's advice, and never sought traditional medical help even though the alternative medicine didn't appear to be working blew huge holes in her case and all the sympathy and credibility leaked out.

So it went and it sucked. Having your life and medical history dragged out of mothballs to discredit you sucks. Being in a car accident sucks. Having a crappy lawyer sucks. Being damaged in a car accident sucks.

Let's all just avoid it and drive safe, OK? Keep your eyes on the road!