Over at Reason.com, Tim Cavanaugh uncovers the real problem with America’s legal system — runaway juries. As Cavanaugh sees it, the problem with the American tort system isn’t out-of-control lawyers or bad laws, its “idiotic jurors.”
The evidence that’s out there certainly seems to support his claim. Take theVioxx verdict against Merck, for example;
?Whenever Merck was up there [on the witness stand], it was like wah, wah, wah,? juror John Ostrom told The Wall Street Journal, imitating the drone of Charlie Brown?s teacher after dunning Merck & Co. for $253 million in damages. He was describing his own reason for finding that Merck?s Vioxx had killed a 59-year-old man, even though the trial established that the man had died of unrelated causes.
Ostrom?s fellow jurors don?t seem much cleverer. Marsha Robbins prayed to be made forewoman, and in an irrefutable proof of God?s bounty ended up getting the position uncontested. Lorraine Blas noted in her questionnaire that she?s a fan of The Oprah Winfrey Show, and when plaintiff?s lawyer Mark Lanier in his closing arguments suggested a guilty verdict might land the jury a spot on Oprah?s show, Blas, rather than being creeped out by this used car salesman?s trick, laughed and enjoyed the lawyer?s attention. And consider juror/medical genius Matthew Pallardy, who, despite evidence to the contrary, ?kind of figured? the victim suffered from a Vioxx-related blood clot, ?even if it went away real quick.?
Not only did the Vioxx jury ignore the science that was presented to them, they ignored reason altogether and seem to have had fame and fortune on their minds. This is not an uncommon mindset among jurors.
After convicting Martha Stewart on charges tangential to insider trading, camera-hogging juror Chappell Hartridge called the verdict ?a victory for the little guys who lose money thanks to these kinds of transactions.?Maybe it?s a message to the big wigs.?
I’ve long doubted the wisdom of having jurors try civil cases. In the small number of such cases I’ve tried, the jurors seemed bored with the subject matter entirely and eager to get out of the Courtroom as soon as possible. In most cases, I don’t even consider it to be to my client’s advantage to have a jury trial — a bench trial on a breach of contract case is a much more predictable affair and I see no reason why the same wouldn’t be true of a complex product liability matter like the Vioxx case.
I don’t know what to do about the fact that jurors in high profile cases have become, for lack of a better phrase, media whores. The First Amendment pretty much precludes any law that would prohibit jurors from talking to the press after the story is over, and its clear that these type of cases — be it Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson, Martha Stewart, or Scott Peterson — do attract higher ratings for the CNN’s and Fox News’s of the world.
As for the problem of idiotic jurors, maybe we need to establish some minimum level of competency or intelligence that has to be achieved for someone to be eligible for jury service. At the very least, as Cavanaugh says:
We could start by stating publicly what everybody admits in private: American jurors are a bunch of louts, nincompoops, and media whores who need to stop trusting their guts and start listening to people smarter than themselves. The future of the Lawsuit Nation may depend on it.
