Truth, justice, and the jury.

AuthorDiamond, Shari Seidman
PositionPanel III: Truth, the Jury, and the Adversarial System - Federalist Society 2002 Symposium on Law and Truth
  1. PUBLIC INFORMATION ABOUT THE JURY II. SYSTEMATIC STUDIES OF JURY DECISIONS III. HOW JURIES DECIDE IV. CONCLUSION An experienced attorney recently forwarded an email sharing the descriptions of several recent verdicts in civil cases. He suggested that the cases might be of use in teaching law students why most lawsuits are settled. The list contained in the email included the following cases:

    (a) January 2000: Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little boy was Ms. Robertson's son. (b) October 1998: Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn't reenter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation. Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of half a million dollars. (c) November 2000: Merv Garzinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma purchased a brand new 32 foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having joined the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly the Winnie left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Garzinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the handbook that he couldn't actually do this. He was awarded $1,750,000 plus a new Winnie. (Winnebago actually changed their handbooks on the back of this court case, just in case there are any other complete morons buying their vehicles.) (1) These reported verdicts offer dramatic support to critics of the civil jury who question the wisdom of the Seventh Amendment, to those who favor limiting the Seventh Amendment's application, and to advocates of tort reform who claim that the civil jury is out of control. The general theme is that a group of laypersons cannot be trusted to find the truth and to administer even-handed justice. One problem mars this neat fit with what critics of the civil jury have always assumed. It is that none of the three cases described above, or any of the other four included in the email, actually exists. Each of the described cases is complete with date, name of plaintiff, and location, but none could be located in court records, jury verdict reporters, contemporaneous news accounts, or even through more informal avenues, such as checking with the chairpersons of local bar association tort committees. In response to our query about the case that allegedly caused it to alter its manual, Winnebago replied, "As far as we are concerned, there is no truth to this story." (2)

    Why was this list of imaginary cases created and circulated widely on the Internet? One possible answer is that supporters of tort reform create and diligently distribute false information about jury verdicts to garner support for their reform efforts. Even if such efforts to mislead do occur, (3) the question remains: why did a sophisticated attorney believe that these purported descriptions of jury verdicts were accurate reports? One logical possibility is that even if these cases are fabrications, juries regularly do make unjustified awards to undeserving plaintiffs. If that is true, however, why invent imaginary cases?

    If these urban legends do not accurately portray jury behavior, belief in their accuracy can impose serious costs. Defendants may be induced to settle unwarranted claims not merely to avoid the cost of defending them in court, but also in the mistaken belief that a jury cannot be trusted to reject those claims. Plaintiffs may be encouraged to file suit, mistakenly believing that a frivolous claim will succeed before a sympathetic and gullible jury. (4) The legal system may be forced to spend valuable time on claims that have no chance of succeeding on the merits. And the citizens called for jury duty may see their involuntary public service unjustifiably undermined and devalued.

    The theme of this Symposium is Law and Truth. Consistent with that theme, I will take a closer look at "the truth" about the jury and its ability to get at "the truth," comparing the information the ordinary citizen receives from the media with the data that emerge from systematic studies of jury decisions and decision-making.

  2. PUBLIC INFORMATION ABOUT THE JURY

    To find what is true about the jury and to explain how and why perceptions of the jury differ from reality, a more complex and systematic approach is required than simply surfing the Interact or absorbing what the news media offer. The public picture of the jury is sketchy and unsystematic, so it is easy to fill in the gap with anecdotes and misinformation. Because media reports generally focus on the unusual case or verdict, the popular image of jury behavior that emerges is skewed in the direction of those exceptional cases. In addition, even news stories about actual jury verdicts provide incomplete and potentially misleading descriptions of the evidence that the jury heard and, due to the secrecy of jury deliberations, only limited information on how the jury reached its decision.

    For example, the media generally described the now infamous McDonald's case as one in which "a woman spills coffee in her lap, sues McDonald's for making coffee so hot that it severely burned her, and gets millions." (5) Although a few stories provided more detail, most failed to include some or all of the following information that might have altered the ubiquitous impression that the case was a prototype of unjustified litigiousness and jury irrationality. (6) The plaintiff, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, was a passenger in her adult grandson's car, which was parked by a curb in the McDonald's parking lot. (7) When she attempted to remove the lid from the coffee just purchased at the drive-thru, the coffee spilled in her lap. (8) It caused third degree burns, requiring hospitalization and skin grafts and resulting in severe pain, partial disability for up to two years following the accident, and permanent disfigurement. (9)

    The McDonald's manual specified that coffee should be served at temperatures between 180 and 190 degrees, and experts confirmed that liquids at that temperature can cause highly painful and disfiguring third degree burns. (10) A McDonald's quality assurance supervisor admitted during trial that coffee at 180 to 190 degrees can cause burns and is a hazard. (11) McDonald's had received over 700 complaints about injuries due to hot coffee in the previous decade (12) and had not changed the temperature of its coffee. (13)

    The jury determined that compensatory damages amounted to $200,000, but attributed 20% of the liability for the accident to Ms. Liebeck, presumably for putting the coffee cup between her legs in order to free up both her hands for...

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