Summary Jury Trials in Connecticut Courts
| Pages | 181 |
| Publication year | 2021 |
68 CBJ 181. SUMMARY JURY TRIALS IN CONNECTICUT COURTS
As the civil dockets of Connecticut's courts have burgeoned and the wait for jury trial of civil cases has lengthened, particularly in the large judicial districts,(fn1) the judicial department has responded by trying to offer litigants a variety of alternatives to full trial: arbitration,(fn2) fact-finding,(fn3) and use of attorney trial referees to conduct bench trials.(fn4) The courts have also experimented with case management techniques, such as early intervention conferences(fn5) and individual calendaring.(fn6) Other management techniques are bifurcation of issues at the time of trial, or shortening up the trial, supervision of scheduling and presentation of issues by trial management conferences, or persuading the defendants to admit either liability or damages and try the case only on the other issue.
Only four to five percent of all civil cases filed are actually pursued all the way to judgment, and the judicial department has increasingly focused its efforts on ways of assisting earlier settlements. Pretrial settlement conferences are an established technique of this approach, and sixty judges have attended a multi-session settlement skills training course to increase their efficacy in this mediating role. New court rules are under discussion to allow cases to be suspended for mediation by providers of alternate dispute resolution services, especially the proposed state-federal mediation center, Sta-Fed ADR, Inc.
All of the approaches mentioned above involve either the furnishing of a trial though by a trier other than a judge or the furnishing of a service other than a trial, such as supervision in reaching a compromise. Over the past two years, the authors
(and several other judges assigned to the civil division) have introduced a hybrid: an abbreviated trial that meets some of the needs satisfied by full trial, and that serves as an impetus for compromise. This device is generally referred to as a summary jury trial,(fn7) a proceeding that is a promising option for achieving resolution of carefully selected cases.
This article will explain the uses and formats of summary jury trials and analyze the advantages and pitfalls of using this device to resolve pending civil suits.
Summary jury trials are advisory, abbreviated non-binding trials presented to juries who then render a decision on liability, damages, or both, for the purpose of promoting settlement of a case. Summary jury trials are voluntary, not compulsory, and conducted by a judge in the courtroom under specially constructed ground rules which are designed to give the parties confidence that their legal positions are effectively stated, with the expectation that the advisory verdict may cause them to reexamine their positions and settle the case without a full trial on the merits. For impact and authenticity, the proceeding is conducted as much as possible like a regular trial, but with no witnesses or a limited number of witnesses, with stipulations by the parties on some issues that would otherwise be contested at a trial, and with controlled summaries of some of the evidence by the attorneys.
The jurors are selected by the judge from the panel of jurors in the jury pool present in the courthouse on the day of the proceeding. The judge usually asks the whole panel of jurors a series of questions designed to eliminate biased or unwilling participants. The lawyers for the parties present an abbreviated version of their client's case in one of several formats previously agreed upon between counsel and a judge. The presentation consists of a summary of the expected evidence or a combination of argument and limited evidence. The judge gives an abbreviated charge on the applicable law and instructs the jury which issues are to be decided by them. The jury then deliberates and renders an advisory verdict. In some cases the attorneys are allowed to question the jurors after the case as to how they
arrived at their decision.
Many civil disputes are so similar to other cases that have proceeded to actual jury verdicts that objective counsel can project, particularly after a pretrial conference with a judge, the likely verdict or at least what a verdict range might be. Such cases usually settle, unless either counsel or the parties have unrealistic expectations. Where a case presents an unusual problem on liability issues or an element of damages, neither counsel nor the judge conducting a pretrial settlement conference may be able to make comparisons to cases that have produced actual verdicts. This uncertainty over the result, carrying with it the risk of losing the case at trial, may actually cause a settlement, but the lack of a sound basis for projecting the eventual outcome may also make both sides unwilling to settle for fear that they will overvalue or undervalue the case. The summary jury trial may supply a piece of information crucial to the negotiating process by giving the litigants an idea of just what a jury will do with a case. While the proceeding may not in fact produce the same result as an actual trial, it provides some information that can be used in completing negotiations and settling a case that would otherwise be tried to a verdict. The litigants may be more satisfied with the proceeding because "jurors," and not just courthouse insiders, have played a part in resolving the case, and the decision is made in a formal proceeding with a closer resemblance to an actual trial than the standard settlement conference procedure, in which the parties themselves do not usually participate.
Since a summary jury trial requires use of both public and private resources, it is appropriate for only carefully selected cases that are not amenable to resolution by customary settlement procedures. Since the purpose of the summary jury trial is to settle cases, it is not likely to be successful where there are multiple parties involved or both liability and damages are seriously contested. It is most useful where there is a genuine difference of opinion on a major issue which prevents settlement, the proceeding will address that issue, and the parties are sufficiently objective to be influenced by the reaction of a neutral outsider. If there are too many issues in dispute, any one of which may have a material effect on the outcome, the possibility
of multiple results lessens the chance that the parties will accept the advisory verdict, since they have the impression that a change in one or more facts will result in a better outcome for them.
The procedure works best in cases in which- there is no significant dispute on liability, or in which the main difficulty is evaluating damages, such as valuation of an unusual injury, such as a scar or a psychological injury. For example, a summary jury was recently asked to determine the right amount of money to compensate a person who was erroneously told he had cancer and who lived with that burden for several months.
Where there is a dispute as to the amount of economic damages, such as a loss of earning capacity claim, the procedure may also aid a settlement. The device was used in New Haven in a case in which the parties had widely divergent views on the scope of lost wages: The plaintiff insisted that his injury had caused a steep decline in the fortunes of a small manufacturing company, and the defendant was certain no jury would accept the claim and therefore refused to include it in its calculation of its exposure.
In some cases where there is no material dispute over the damages causally related to an event but liability of the defendants is disputed, the proceeding may be useful, either by indicating a probable verdict for either the plaintiff or the defendant or by allocating liability among several defendants. A judge in Litchfield has submitted to a summary jury the task of assigning percentages of liability to defendants in a tort action. Summary jury trial may also be useful where the whole issue of liability depends upon the characterization of a set of facts. For instance, in a trade secrets case, the crux of liability may be whether or not the information claimed to have been secret was maintained as such.
Unusual or controversial theories of liability may profitably be submitted: A summary jury trial was used in New Haven to test a jury's reaction to a claim by a child against a babysitter who failed to mention that a burner on the gas stove was lighted; the child brushed against the stove and suffered a severe burn.
The procedure was used in a products liability case in Danbury in which the plaintiff claimed that her car suddenly accelerated, causing her to strike a stone wall. The defendant relied on the statements given by the plaintiff to the police officer
and her motor vehicle accident report. The only witnesses were the plaintiff and a manager from the dealership who brought in the records of the numerous complaints made in the two years after the plaintiff purchased the car, none of which concerned an acceleration problem. The jury heard evidence only on liability and took five minutes to decide the one interrogatory submitted to them: "Was there a manufacturing defect which caused the accident?" The case settled immediately for the defendant's original nominal offer.
Summary jury trials may also be used to test proximate cause questions where it is conceded that a plaintiff's conduct caused some injury to the defendant, but it is disputed whether all of the injuries claimed by the plaintiff resulted from the wrongful act.
Cases that if...
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