Many judges and scholars have written eloquently in defense of the civil jury, warning against even limited intrusions into the right to civil jury trial. Take the late conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who once wrote, “The right of trial by jury in civil cases at common law is fundamental to our history and jurisprudence.... A right so fundamental and sacred to the citizen, whether guaranteed by the Constitution or provided by statute, should be jealously guarded....”
So true. Yet some of the most powerful sentiments about civil juries come not from judges or scholars, but from jurors themselves. Jurors are just ordinary people randomly chosen from the community, making decisions about society’s tolerance (or intolerance) for certain types of behavior, deliberating and rendering verdicts, and then fading anonymously back into the community. It’s an incredible system.
Despite being enshrined in the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and nearly every state constitution, the civil jury system has been under siege for several decades now. The power and authority of civil jurors, who cannot be bought-off by special interests, represent a tremendous threat to the power structure in this country. Today, between so-called “tort reform” laws in most states, the recent proliferation of forced arbitration, and the dramatic decrease in civil jury trials, the entire system is on shaky ground. So what to do?
Here's one thing we might try. In all the political fighting around these issues, sometimes we forget to listen to those at the core of this debate - jurors themselves. Why do civil juries do what they do, and how do they feel when their power is taken away? There are two main reasons juries render verdicts for plaintiffs. One is to provide fair and adequate compensation to the injured. Second is to hold wrongdoers accountable. Here are just a few examples – in their own words.
Compensation to the injured
- The case of James Todd Beason
James Todd Beason, an Texas oilfield worker, was severely injured when a crane fell on him, leading to two amputations on his left arm. He now “lives daily with severe nerve pain and has several other health complications as a result.” When he sued the company in Oklahoma, he and his wife were awarded $9 million in economic damages and $6 million in noneconomic damages. Little did the jury know, however (because they were not told), that Oklahoma’s state lawmakers had capped noneconomic damages at $350,000. So the judge was forced to drastically reduce this verdict.
As recently reported in Tulsa World,
Beason said he will never forget the reaction of the jury when they were told about the cap.
“Grown men and women came outside and were in tears,” he said. “I remember a gentleman came up and he was bawling. He was crying. He said, ‘We thought we were doing the right thing. We thought we were taking care of you and your family.’”
Fortunately, the Oklahoma Supreme Court was listening, and just recently invalidated the $350,000 cap, finding it unconstitutional. Chalk one up for those jurors!
- The case of Stephen Olsen
Steven Olsen is blind and brain damaged because, as a jury ruled, he was a victim of medical malpractice when he was two years old. He fell on a stick in the woods while hiking. The family’s HMO refused to do an $800 CAT scan, which would have detected a growing brain mass caused by the stick.
When they sued the HMO, a jury awarded $7.1 million in noneconomic damages for Steven’s avoidable life of suffering. But the judge was forced to cut this award to $250,000, the amount of California’s noneconomic compensation cap. This outraged the jury. Jury foreman Thomas Kearns then wrote a letter published in the San Diego Union Tribune, in which he described how they had reached their verdict:
“We viewed video of Steven, age 2, shortly before the accident. This beautiful child talked and shrieked with laughter as any other child at play. Later, Steven was brought to the court and we watched as he groped, stumbled and felt his way along the front of the jury box. There was no chatter or happy laughter. Steven is doomed to a life of darkness, loneliness and pain. He is blind, brain damaged and physically retarded. He will never play sports, work, or enjoy normal relationships with his peers. His will be a lifetime of treatment, therapy, prosthesis fitting and supervision around the clock.”
This anti-jury cap is still the law in California.
Accountability
- Whirlpool
Some years ago, an Alabama jury reached a $581 million verdict against Whirlpool, which had dealers all over the state soliciting — door-to-door — poor, unsophisticated and elderly customers to purchase satellite-TV dishes for $1,100 plus 22 percent interest. The same equipment could be bought at an electronics store for $199, amounting to an effective interest rate of 300 percent. One witness who was sold a satellite dish was legally blind. Another had less than a 5th grade education. A former agent who later quit testified that Whirlpool specifically targeted illiterate and unsophisticated people, and that he had trained others to lie about the terms of the financing which included a deceptive credit card scheme.
Why $581 million? A juror who spoke to one of the lawyers in the case said that the jury was “sick” at how Whirlpool treated poor, uneducated people, misrepresenting to them from the very start. The juror also said the jury was “inflamed” that there were still “thousands of people out there” who were victims of the scheme, but that Whirlpool had not helped those people. They felt their verdict was important “to get their Whirlpool’s attention.” (See more here.)
The verdict was eventually cut nearly in half – to $300 million – and the parties later settled for an undisclosed sum. Within a couple weeks of that case the Alabama legislature passed a law capping punitive damages.
2. McDonald’s Coffee Case.
In the documentary film, Hot Coffee, which tells the story of the often unfairly-maligned McDonald’s coffee case, two jurors described why the jury decided to hit the company with $2.7 million in punitive damages (later reduced by the judge). An article in Reader’s Digest explains:
The trial revealed that [plaintiff Stella] Liebeck was not alone. McDonald’s had received more than 700 complaints about burns from hot beverages over the previous ten-year period.… “There was a person behind every number, and I don’t think the corporation was attaching enough importance to that,” juror Betty Farnham told the Wall Street Journal.
After seven days of testimony and four hours of deliberation, the jurors sided with Liebeck. They awarded her $200,000 in compensatory damages. But because she caused the spill, they reduced the amount to $160,000. The jurors then awarded her $2.7 million in punitive damages, which, they reasoned, was equivalent to about two days’ worth of McDonald’s coffee sales. The total was $2,735,000 more than Liebeck’s lawsuit had requested.
“The only way you can get the attention of a big company [is] to make punitive damages against them,” said juror Marjorie Getman. “And we thought this was a very small punitive damage.”
Jurors are understandably angry when they find out that their efforts to be fair and just are cheapened and devalued. As we celebrate Law Day today, it is important to be aware that we are reaching a new level of disrespect for the civil jury system in this country. The nation’s founders would clearly be angry too.