The Adventures of Juror #6

The verdict has been reached, read in court, and recorded. I have turned in my juror badge (along with a suggestion for the Juror Suggestion Box) and I have put the business card of a brilliant lawyer on my fridge, just in case I ever need a brilliant lawyer I can't possibly afford. My boss is thrilled that I am coming back to work full time tomorrow, instead of trying to cram as many "make-up" hours as possible into evenings and weekends. I am thrilled to have my life back, and to finally be able to talk about what I have been listening to and learning about over the past three weeks. Justice, or at least what we call "justice" in this country, has been served. And yet there are really no winners in this situation. And I feel very badly for both sides.

Those of you who know me may know of my very weird phobia of jury duty. It's not rational. Phobias never are. It's not something I can totally explain. I've been called to jury duty several times in the past, in two different states. I've been selected for one case that was thrown out after testimony had already started; I've was excused from the Robert Blake criminal trial for financial reasons, due to the fact that my employer did not pay me for days spent at jury duty, and it was expected to be a long case. And I was in the painful process of juror selection for a criminal case that settled on Day 2 before we had all been accepted or rejected by opposing councils. What was so terrifying? I think it's a combination of things. One big factor is the fact that you have absolutely no control over your own life during the length of the trial. You are told when you may have a restroom break, when you may have a lunch break, what you may and may not talk about, and who you may not even say "Hello" to in the hallway. You are told that you must show up at a courthouse 20 miles away from your home (or in the case I was just on, 30 miles for one juror), whether it's in a neighborhood you know or even feel comfortable in or not. (I personally hate downtown L.A. and avoid it as often as possible. It freaks me out.) Then there are the questions. You, as a potential juror, are required to answer any personal question the lawyers want to ask you, and you are under oath. Anything in your background you might feel a bit uncomfortable discussing with a roomful of strangers? You do have the option of requesting a private meeting to answer any question you are asked, but you still have to discuss the personal matter with all the lawyers, the judge, and the court reporter taking down every word. Am I proud of every moment in my past? Do I really need to tell you every detail of my father's past surgeries? Couldn't you honestly just ask me if I can be fair on a specific subject? Or perhaps ask me how I feel about a topic, and not pry into my personal experiences relating to that topic in detail? After all is said and done, you are only going to ask me if I can be fair and unbiased, despite my own experience, so couldn't we skip to that part and make this much faster and more comfortable for everyone?

At any rate, I have a phobia of jury duty. So I was not looking forward to going in again this time. The phobia seems to have increased with every experience of serving as a juror or potential juror. But I psyched myself up as well as I could, and I went in. Now this time around, I wasn't asked to go to downtown Los Angeles. I only had to go to Burbank. That was the only reason I didn't out and out panic and risk jail time by fleeing the country. Seriously. Burbank is very close to my home. The courthouse is small and non-threatening. I did a practice run the afternoon before I was to appear. I'm not kidding. I drove Prince Consort to the courthouse and to the parking garage and even drove in to see the level where jurors were to park. Then we went to the alternate parking lot, in case the first lot was full. I had to practice. As I did so, my anxiety levels came down. We parked near the parking garage and walked to the courthouse. I saw the door I was to go into and relaxed even more. I could do this. It would only be for one day, if I were lucky, and then it would be over for at least another year.

I won't go into the panic about hearing them announce the next morning that they were going to send some of us to another courthouse that needed more jurors. I hadn't practiced at that one, and the thought filled me with anxiety again. But my name wasn't called, and I was staying in Burbank. Not long after about 80% of the jurors in the Juror Assembly Room were packed off to Glendale, I was sent along with the remaining 20% to a courtroom down the hall. By mid-morning the next day, we had a jury. I was now Juror #6.

Unlike all the cases I had ever been involved with before, this was a Civil case. The plaintiff was seeking damages from the Defendant, who admitted to having hit her as a pedestrian with his car three years earlier. Two things came to mind pretty quickly. Number 1, if he already admitted to being at fault for the accident, this should be a pretty simple and quick case. And number 2, why did it take 3 years to bring to court? Maybe there was more to it, and it wouldn't be so simple after all.

The pedestrian had been hit, or really barely "tapped" by the Defendant's bumper as he briefly let up on the break before putting his foot back down on it securely. We heard the top experts on knee injuries, arthritis, and knee surgeries from both the Plaintiff's lawyers and the Defense lawyer. I now know more about meniscus tears and bone edemas than I ever would have imagined. (And when you hear the phrase "bone edema" repeatedly several times in a week, the song "Funky Cold Medina" can get stuck in your head for days!) I have met the surgeon who does all the knee surgeries on the L.A. Lakers and the surgeon who does all the knee surgeries on the L.A. Raiders. They are colleagues who refer their patients to each other for second opinions. And they both saw the X-rays and the MRIs involved in this case and saw totally different things. What do you do when you have two of the top experts, both of whom have been practicing as orthopaedic surgeons since the 1980s, who tell you opposing views of the same "evidence"?

The court tells you to use your common sense. And in fact, while in criminal cases, the burden of proof requires you to be sure "beyond a reasonable doubt," in a civil case, you only have to believe that something is "more likely to be true than not". So we have a driver who says he took his foot off the break for a second, but slammed it back on when he realized there was a pedestrian at the corner of his car, and we have a pedestrian who says the driver came driving at full speed (whatever that is) a block or two towards her. Wouldn't that have knocked her down? Wouldn't she have more issues than knee pain, if that had happened? We're to use our common sense to determine what is "more likely to be true than not".

The Defense was willing to pay for whatever we the jury determined he was at fault for. The Plaintiff claimed that she worked 20 hours a day, 5 days a week, and that as a result of the accident, she could only work 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. Really? Come on! Really? I've been going to jury duty for under 8 hours a day (juries in Department B in the Burbank courthouse get longer lunches, start later, and finish earlier than employees do anywhere I've ever worked) and going to my job for, on average, 3 hours each night and then on weekends. I'm still not averaging 20 hours a day, and after 2 1/2 weeks of this, I am exhausted! I'm also a good decade and a half younger than the plaintiff! If they wanted us to award them the $2 million they were seeking, they should have portrayed a more realistic scenario. There was no way any one of us, trying to fit jury duty into our schedules, could believe that anyone would work 20 hours a day everyday until retirement. And go to the gym. And go out dancing. And do all the housework and cooking for her family at home. Really? So...the plaintiff didn't sleep? Or shower? Ever? Because there was no way she had time to do that, with everything else she used to do before the accident that she could no longer do now.

So I guess my tips to the lawyer for the plaintiff would be #1) Really be on your "A" game. If you're seeking $2 million in damages for lost earnings, medical bills, and pain and suffering, you had better prove that all of the medical problems your client has today are a direct result of the accident you claim they are. We saw x-rays and MRIs and heard expert testimony proving that the plaintiff has terrible knees today. But they showed conditions that had obviously started months or even years before the accident (giant bone spurs, which according to some expert witnesses, are a result of severe arthritis). The plaintiff's lawyers failed to prove, even a little bit, that the plaintiff's knee problems were all a direct result of the accident.

Tip #2) Come up with a better argument! When the defense, which was extremely thorough in everything, disproved your theories again and again, all you came up with was calling the Defense witness an "advocate". Really? That's all you've got? Because name calling didn't impress me. You should have proven your case.

Tip #3) Do your research, and make sure your witnesses do theirs. We literally had one "expert" witness admit that he had only looked over the depositions for "about 5 minutes" before testifying about them. There were several hundreds of pages to said depositions, but the plaintiff's lawyers hadn't given the expert any depositions from the Defense side until 5 minutes before he testified. The Defence expert witnesses, on the other hand, had read all depositions "from cover to cover". One witness from the defence said he had spent 17 hours doing research for this case, and was billing the lawyers accordingly. A witness on the plaintiff's side said he had crunched numbers according to what the lawyer who hired him had told him, rather than getting all the documents himself and seeing which numbers really needed to be considered. He spent some time doing those numbers, but it was nowhere near 17 hours. Be prepared. Because the other side is going to be.

Tip #4), and this is a big one. Do not, under any circumstances, ever, ever refer to your female client as "a cow". Unbelievable. The women on the jury didn't like it, and neither did the woman judge. This was the very last thing the junior lawyer for the plaintiff said in court. The senior lawyer took over again after that. I don't care how funny you might think it is. It is disrespectful, it is completely inappropriate, and it makes you look like a sexist bastard who has never gone to law school. As the judge said loudly at the time, "Sit down, council! That is not funny!" Cow, indeed.

So we came to a verdict. The plaintiff's lawyers did not prove that their client's knee problems were all a result of the accident. So we figured out what we thought was probably a result of the accident and what probably wasn't. We totalled the cost of the medical treatments the plaintiff received for what was caused by the accident, we totalled the wages she lost for a certain "reasonable" amount of time that she couldn't work, due to the accident and not to pre-existing conditions, and we came up with a number to cover pain and suffering due to the accident and not due to what her lawyers wanted. And we awarded her that. Some thought the number was too high, and some thought it was too low. It was not $2 million. It was nowhere near $2 million. But the plaintiff's side did not prove that her medical problems were a result of the accident.

In an ideal world, this woman would win the lottery tonight and get $24 million dollars. Then she can pay her doctor, her good lawyer and her junior lawyer (the "cow" comment), and get a total knee replacement, which every expert agreed she needed. But every expert also stated that you only do total knee replacements for arthritis damage, which is not caused by a car rolling slightly for a second, even if it hits your knee just right. Bone edemas are caused by such accidents; severe arthritis and meniscus tears are caused by other things, such as age, genetics, and working on your feet for 20 hours a day for months and years. I hope this woman does win the lottery. She had no insurance at the time of the accident (which we were not allowed to know or consider at the time of our deliberations, but which we could guess from the fact that she went to LA County hospital; no one goes to County if they have any other options), and she needs a total knee replacement, which is not cheap. But I couldn't make the defendant pay her $2 million, whether or not he even has $2 million (and he can't. He's a retired college professor, like my dad is.), for something he didn't cause. We made him pay a sum in the tens of thousands, which is more than I'm really comfortable with asking someone who takes his foot off the break for a second or two and barely taps someone in the cross walk for, but which we as a group decided was the closest we were all going to get to "fair". Accidents happen. That's life. That's the way it works. We don't all get $2 million dollars when we are involved in any kind of accident. When I'm crossing the street, I don't just think about the laws of traffic: I think about the laws of physics. If someone looks like they aren't seeing me, I don't walk close to their car. Does that make the accident the plaintiff's fault? No. But it's not smart to assume everyone around you is looking out for you, either.

So nobody really won. The Defendant, who had no intention of hurting anyone, and who didn't hear from the plaintiff after talking to her briefly the day after the accident (and whom she told repeatedly that she was OK) until more than 2 years later when he was suddenly being sued, has to pay what to me is a chunk of money. In addition to that, he has to pay his lawyer's fees, which are another chunk of money. I know how much the expert witnesses charged the lawyer! That was all in the testimony! The plaintiff didn't win. She got just about enough money, total, to cover her medical expenses so far, including expenses related to the accident and expenses not proven to be related to the accident. But her lawyers are going to take a cut of that, and she is still going to owe something to her doctor. She isn't going to be set for life, by any means. And she still needs to have a total knee replacement. I just couldn't award her the money for that, since it wasn't the defendant's fault or responsibility to pay for that.

I told Prince Consort at the beginning of this trial, when I couldn't say a thing about it, that I thought one side was trying to take advantage of the other, but that I didn't know which was which. Now I think I know. I think the poor plaintiff, a minority woman for whom English is a second language, was told to seek legal advice since she had been in an accident. And she found the junior lawyer, who would later call her a "cow" on record. It turns out he isn't really a junior lawyer who normally works with the "good" lawyer on the plaintiff side. He was a young-ish lawyer who hadn't done many trials (he told me this after we were through today) who spent most of the last 3 years working on this case, only to have a much more experienced lawyer brought in at the last minute to do most of the arguing in court.

The younger lawyer, to be honest, was a bit "creepy" to me. He would smile and nod whenever he thought his side was winning, even if it was when his client was crying on the stand about being in constant pain. Seeing someone in pain doesn't make me want to smile at the thought of the paycheck it could bring me. I found his behaviour disgusting. But that wasn't why I agreed to the verdict I did. He asked me point blank after the trial was over if his "cow" joke had influenced my verdict. I said no, that we came up with the verdict we did because he and his colleague failed to prove that his client's pain and suffering and medical needs were a result of the accident and not the pre-existing condition seen in the x-rays taken the day after the accident. He didn't get the point.

There was one other juror left from this case in the building with me, as everyone else had taken off already, happy to be free to get back to their own lives. And the creepy younger lawyer was asking both of us for as much feedback as we could give, since he is still new to arguing cases and he has one coming up in 2 weeks that he will be handling alone. I told him the tips I mentioned above, and he somehow took that to mean that he should have done more of the arguing in this case instead of the experienced lawyer. He just didn't get it.

So here's what I think happened: the plaintiff took the advice of her co-workers or perhaps family to seek legal council. She found Mr. Creepy, whose eyes turned to dollar signs when he heard her story. He recommend her to his doctor of choice, who also suddenly had dollar signs for eyes. Dr. Dollarsigns agreed to do the woman's surgery on a lien and did a controversial surgery that the New England Journal of Medicine has specifically published an article about, saying that this particular surgery should not be done on a patient who has arthritis in the knee. The x-rays and MRIs that had already been taken showed extensive arthritis, and yet Dr. Dollarsigns did the surgery, anyway. Suddenly, the woman has more pain and trouble than ever. Creepy lawyer thinks this is great, as it could be more evidence of pain and suffering caused by the defendant, rather than the questionable doctor. By the way, this doctor has been in private practise for 4 years, unlike the two expert orthopedic surgeons who had each been in practise since before I graduated from high school in the late '80s. I think the less experienced lawyer and the less experienced doctor saw a poor, minority woman and thought they could make a lot of money off of her. They tried to take advantage of her. But they could only do this if they convinced her to take advantage of the Defendant. I don't for a minute think the plaintiff wanted to take advantage of the defendant. In fact, both the plaintiff and the defendant referred to each other from the witness stand with utmost respect, for the most part. I think the defendant was genuinely concerned for the plaintiff, even telling her when the accident happened to go get checked out by a doctor, just to be sure. I think the lawyer and the doctor thought they could take advantage of a simple accident and make money off of it. And now there is a poor woman who lives in constant pain who can't afford knee surgery, because her lawyer got greedy and didn't do his homework.

So nobody wins. I made it a point to get the Defense lawyer's business card immediately after the trial, and all the other jurors came up to him after I did so and asked for his card as well. He actually ran out of cards today. We talked with him for a few minutes, and he admitted that a settlement sum had been discussed and rejected by the plaintiff's lawyers. He wouldn't tell us the sum, but he said that in 90% of cases, the plaintiff would do better to settle out of court.

So, my dear readers, please be extra careful as you drive. Accidents do happen, and while some of us are honest and try not to take advantage of each other, there are some people who will. A simple bump of your fender could land you in a trial seeking $2 million or more. Oh, and don't feel too sorry for the woman who does need a total knee replacement. Yesterday, during closing arguments, she made a rare appearance at the courthouse (the defendant, on the other hand, was there for every second of the trial). At one point, her cell phone rang, despite the sign in plain view to turn all cell phones off or to vibrate. She made a mad dash for the hallway to take that call without a hint of a limp. Does this make her injury claim less valid? It didn't enter our deliberations, as none of us thought about that moment until the Defense lawyer pointed it out to us after the trial was over. But it does make me feel better about not awarding her the full amount her lawyers had been seeking.

I think I will sleep well tonight.

Vegan (Couch) Potato

So in what turns out to be the ironic twisting of the universe (this week), I find myself in the posession of a fully renewed gym membership before being in posession of 839 channels of glorious, full color cable. "How did this happen??" you ask. Trust me-- you're not the only one asking.

Back when Prince Consort was laid off from his Full Time Job With Benefits almost four years ago, we were very practical. We decided not to panic immediately, and to take things as they came, which we hoped would include a new job (and ideally, one that was more interesting to Prince Consort than the last one had been). He worked gigs and odd jobs as they came along, all the while sending out resumes and taking online classes (one of the perks of being laid off from the Full Time Job With Benefits was a year of tuition reinbursement). And little by little, as time went by with no long term work and fewer and fewer interviews, we started making cuts in our budget.

The gym was the first thing to go. We didn't even like the gym. It was a necessary evil, a self-inflicted torture that we avoided whenever we could while trying to justyfy keeping up the payments. By the end, we weren't even pretending we would go most nights, and as we used the gym less and less, it became the obvious first item in the budget to get the ax. Mind you, this was after going approximately three times a week, nearly every week, for close to 5 years. Or was it 6 years? Either way, we had started out quite well, fighting the good fight regularly. And it was a hellish fight. Natural couch potatoes, we had to reach down deep to find motivation. But we did for several years. A high school reunion was the best gym-motivation in all that time.

But as our resolve grew weak and our bank accounts weaker, we gave up the gym memberships. It felt pretty good, too. No longer did we guilt ourselves several times a week into doing something we loathed. We had more time for things like television and Facebook! We told ourselves we would go walking in our neighborhood for exercise and keep trying to play tennis at the local park tennis courts (and that's a story for another blog entry...). We would make an effort not to get fat and lazy, but we wouldn't spend money on our fitness endevours.

In the meantime, we kept the cable. Only an insane person gives up cable before it really becomes necessary! And yet... after more time had gone by with little to no work for Prince Consort, and with my own paycheck now covering medical, dental, and vision for both of us, cable became... a non-essential.

You may have heard the agonized cries of anguish the day we said "Good-bye" to our 839 channels of non-stop media blitz. Prince Consort came home one day with a little, black box to convert our non-digital tv into something that would at least receive the basics: ABC, NBC, CBS, and, for cartoon viewing only, Fox. It felt like we'd had a Ferrari taken away and replaced with a pogo stick. But just as we'd gradually learned to live on less and less money, we slowly started to find our way in a cable-free zone. Hulu became a new best friend. The internet was not only good for distracting us from our empty television, but also for providing tv shows we could no longer get from cable, even if it meant waiting a while for the episodes we wanted to become available. Netflix streaming tied Hulu in the competition for our love. And I could always put on one of my many Anglophreak movies again. The Young Victoria got quite a bit of airtime in our apartment.

And then one weekend, we went cat-sitting for a friend who had cable. We rejoiced at the idea of being able to catch up on tv show episodes we couldn't get online or through Hulu or Netflix! We eagerly anticipated seeing cooking shows we'd never seen on the Food Network channel, new Britcoms on BBC America, and fascinating documentaries on Discovery, TLC, and the History Channel! We sat down with Luscious the cat and prepared to be engaged by all cable had to offer!

We flipped through hundreds of channels and found the best options were a Say Yes to the Dress marathon, Teen Mom 2, and a Valerie Bertinelli biography on Lifetime. Really? We asked ourselves. Surely there must be something more! But the Food Network was showing nothing but meat barbeques, the History Channel was showing 24 hours of black and white footage of WWII airplanes, and BBC America was showing Top Gear alternated with Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmare for the next 7 hours. We had access to 839 channels, and there was still nothing on. We began to realize that our decision to cut the cable to save money had indeed been the right decision.

Fast forward several more months: Prince Consort has a new Full Time Job With Benefits! It may pay about half of what he made before, but after almost 4 years of unemployment and temporary gigs ranging from sanding foam muscles and wiring electrical costumes to installing ceiling fans and unclogging drains, he was happy to have it. So we're now cautiously adding expenses we cut back into the equasion. We tried a free week of Hulu Plus to see if it might be worth the $7.99 a month fee. We've gone out to dinner here and there, whereas before, we would have given a lot of thought to doing so and probably would have stayed in for leftovers instead. And yesterday, I renewed our gym memberships. For a full year.

Because the truth is that even when we do go walking, it's not necessarily for the full amount of time we'd spend at the gym. And walking, while excellent low-impact exercise, isn't nearly as strenuous a work out as the eliptical is. And we've gotten fat and lazy, despite trying not to. Sugar is always more tempting than a fast walk around the block, and chocolate beats stomach crunches every single time. So we're going back to the gym. And we're not going back to cable.

Who knew?