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stoutfellowThe trial ended yesterday.
The case itself was not all that interesting. A woman who had been in a minor traffic accident began having neck and back trouble, culminating in a couple of operations. She attributed the trouble to the accident, and sued the driver of the other car for damages, asking for $325K. (About half of that was for medical bills, the rest for lost wages, pain and suffering, and loss of normal life.)
Only three of the witnesses - the policeman who reached the scene of the accident first, the plaintiff, and her husband - testified in person. The defendant, who has moved to Kansas, and one of the plaintiff's doctors testified via videotape. (The latter tape was over an hour long, and was shown right after lunch....) Three other doctors - two of the plaintiff's, and the defendant's expert - "testified" via written deposition; a spare lawyer took the stand, and the "witness" and the regular lawyers read the questions and responses from the transcripts. I didn't know that was permitted. (I suspect it wouldn't be, in a criminal trial.) By and large, the most interesting thing was keeping an eye on the rhetorical tricks and strategies employed by the lawyers.
The case wasn't interesting, but the deliberation process was. Being put in a smallish room with eleven total strangers, charged with figuring out what the law and the evidence demanded of them; talking, arguing, occasionally joking, trying to work out where everybody stood - that was interesting. Initially, we were pretty evenly divided - four for the plaintiff, four for the defendant, four undecided (I was in the last group); eventually, after various concessions on key issues, I moved into the plaintiff's camp, and perhaps my arguments helped sway a couple of other people. One juror was obstinately opposed to giving the plaintiff anything (and he had reasonably strong reasons for this), but eventually he wore down. We wound up deciding that the back problems were probably not connected to the accident, but the neck problems probably were (>51% chance), and awarded the plaintiff about $83K. We were in deliberations for about 4-1/2 hours; they served us lunch (sandwiches and mini-pizzas), but we continued discussion while eating.
I wound up missing two sessions of my calculus class (one covered, one cancelled), but nothing else. I've postponed tests in the two upper-division classes until next week - they were scheduled for today, but I haven't had time to prepare them. It could have been quite a bit worse.
The case itself was not all that interesting. A woman who had been in a minor traffic accident began having neck and back trouble, culminating in a couple of operations. She attributed the trouble to the accident, and sued the driver of the other car for damages, asking for $325K. (About half of that was for medical bills, the rest for lost wages, pain and suffering, and loss of normal life.)
Only three of the witnesses - the policeman who reached the scene of the accident first, the plaintiff, and her husband - testified in person. The defendant, who has moved to Kansas, and one of the plaintiff's doctors testified via videotape. (The latter tape was over an hour long, and was shown right after lunch....) Three other doctors - two of the plaintiff's, and the defendant's expert - "testified" via written deposition; a spare lawyer took the stand, and the "witness" and the regular lawyers read the questions and responses from the transcripts. I didn't know that was permitted. (I suspect it wouldn't be, in a criminal trial.) By and large, the most interesting thing was keeping an eye on the rhetorical tricks and strategies employed by the lawyers.
The case wasn't interesting, but the deliberation process was. Being put in a smallish room with eleven total strangers, charged with figuring out what the law and the evidence demanded of them; talking, arguing, occasionally joking, trying to work out where everybody stood - that was interesting. Initially, we were pretty evenly divided - four for the plaintiff, four for the defendant, four undecided (I was in the last group); eventually, after various concessions on key issues, I moved into the plaintiff's camp, and perhaps my arguments helped sway a couple of other people. One juror was obstinately opposed to giving the plaintiff anything (and he had reasonably strong reasons for this), but eventually he wore down. We wound up deciding that the back problems were probably not connected to the accident, but the neck problems probably were (>51% chance), and awarded the plaintiff about $83K. We were in deliberations for about 4-1/2 hours; they served us lunch (sandwiches and mini-pizzas), but we continued discussion while eating.
I wound up missing two sessions of my calculus class (one covered, one cancelled), but nothing else. I've postponed tests in the two upper-division classes until next week - they were scheduled for today, but I haven't had time to prepare them. It could have been quite a bit worse.
