Today I heard an hour and a half of very boring testimony, then went to lunch, then sat in a room for two hours with my fellows jurors before finding out that the case we had been working on for the past 5 days had just settled and we were released.
BUT
I can finally talk about my jury duty experience!
photo credit
It was really hard to not talk about it since it was so ripe with blog material. It involved a 15-20 foot fall from a steel beam at a construction site. Unfortunately, the plantiff did not take an ambulance immediately after the fall and nobody took any Xrays or MRIs on the day of the fall. It was very difficult to ascertain what injuries actually occurred from the fall and what was regular wear-and-tear on his body as an iron worker.
The juicy part of the story comes from the fact that the plantiff got (perhaps) a little greedy when he realized he had a nebulous paper trail regarding his accident. He started attributing "every sneeze and hangnail" (my opinion) as a result of the fall. He got a bunch of procedures done and he was claiming that he is forever disabled from the fall. He expected 5.6 million in damages.
The defendant - the construction company - was liable (not guilty, in their opinion) due to NYC laws that make it impossible for a worker to be partially responsible for an accident on a construction site. The defending attorney was not able to say it during the case, but the reason the plantiff fell was because he didn't "tie off" before walking across the beam. In their opinion he was 80% responsible for his fall, but the law is all-or-nothing and a previous trial made the defendant 100% liable.
Our trial wasn't a "Your Honor, we find the _________ guilty." situation. It was really an issue of how much money the plantiff would receive.
Through the course of five days, we learned that the plantiff told 3 doctors 3 different stories about his marital status (perhaps trying to milk it for emotional distress?) He also drove himself to all of his follow-up doctor and physical therapy appointments in Manhattan and Staten Island. He lives in New Jersey. Hmmm. I wasn't impressed by that: if he was as injured as he was claiming to be, I don't think he could have driven himself everywhere.
Further (and, yeah, sidebar: try not to get yourself on trial ever - it gets personal real quick), he used marijuana regularly. I am not opposed to that, but he only told 2 of his doctors about his use while also using at least 4 prescription drugs for anxiety, depression, insomnia and pain. Amazingly, NONE of the doctors did anything to alter the other medications to account for the marijuana use. They simply ignored his confession or said, "Oh, well, you are on many other medications, you should stop that." and that was it. His doctors seemed a little careless to me and that made it hard for me to take their testimonies seriously.
Oh, and he also had a DUI in his past. We never really got into that, but it was going to be a thing if we had stayed on that trial into next week, I think. The defendant's lawyer was setting it up. It was totally brewing.
The doctors representing the plantiff drove me nuts. They were 3 out of the 4 "expert testimonies" that we actually heard. Two more doctors from the defendant side were scheduled for the week after Thanksgiving (for a total of six testimonies) and then the actual plantiff would have taken the stand, but we never got that far. I think the plantiff's doctors were slippery. They answered every question with phrases that started with things like "Possibly...." You know, leaving it all very wide open to interpretation. They kept contradicting themselves and didn't know specific dates and details. I was losing patience. I have to sit there - the least they can do is be prepared.
Of course, no one on the jury could talk about it while we were in the process, so we were really careful not to talk at all.
That was a bummer.
We started visiting this afternoon when we were left in the jury deliberation room for an excessively long time. Juror 5 finally broke the silence with,
"SOMEthing is going down in that court room right now...."
With that, the floodgates opened and we all started chatting and - wow - I wish we had started talking earlier because all along I had been serving with 7 really smart and interesting people.
When the court officer was giving us our release letters, she smiled and said,
"Hey - we're curious. Based on what you know so far, what would you have given the plantiff?"
The 8 of us shrugged and agreed that he sustained an injury, but most likely not nearly as severe as he was claiming. We probably would have awarded him 1.8 - 2 million.
(And we hadn't even been told yet about they fact that he didn't tie off before working on the beam. I have a feeling my jury friends would have been all "Oh hell no!" if we had known that and we had to make a real decision.)
The court officer laughed and said something to the effect of,
"I knew you guys were tough! The plantiff did the right thing by accepting the offer. The clerk is going to be so amused when she hears that you were ready to low ball after that 4 day train wreck!"
Ends up, the plantiff's lawyers were watching us in the courtroom and got a feeling that we would possibly award them less than they wanted. The plantiff was asking 5.6, the defendant was willing to pay 2.5 -- they ended up settling at 3.25 million.
My Take Away Lesson:
Next time, I won't wait until the 4th day to start chatting with my mates in the deliberation room. I think we were all tentative because we were concerned that an attitude or sly turn of phrase might slip out and inform others about what we were thinking about the case. Turns out, it is possible to talk about lots of things that don't involve the trial. Today, we had a great bunny-trail conversation that started with the 1990's revolution in Trinidad, bounced over to natural disasters we've been in, bounced over to places we've traveled, bounced to child-rearing in New York and then bounce to a great discussion about culture and our hope for the future blending of ethnicities in artistic endeavors in the city. WHEW.
I think the grueling process of sitting in a holding room and going thru initial interviews at the first day of jury duty actually works. It weeds people out. Everyone in our group wanted to serve on this trial and we were all very curious for curiosity's sake. (My favorite kind of people!)
As far as that last "art" thing we discussed before the end of the day, I was so happy to hear them all say that they'd prefer to see ethnic groups working together rather than focusing solely on their own museums, plays, art shows, dance companies, etc. Having your "own thing" is fine, but they all felt that New York City has great potential for leadership by creating works through collaborative efforts. I love hearing that!
Like I said - VERY interesting group of people. I wish I had opened up earlier.
