superdave Posted August 24, 2006 Share Posted August 24, 2006 The jury I was on ended up in a mistrial. The plaintiff, who had been in a car wreck, had waited five years for this to come to trial and one guy screwed up the whole thing. The plaintiff did not have a strong case plus he represented himself poorly. Poor documentation of expenses. Nevertheless he was due compensation for some of his out of pocket expenses. The lone holdout wanted to give him $25,000 bucks. The rest of us said $4,000 bucks because he did not prove he had lost everything he initially claimed to have lost. It's sad because now he has to start over again and hope it doesn't take five years to come back to court. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitar55 Posted August 24, 2006 Share Posted August 24, 2006 Mistrial or hung jury? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
superdave Posted August 24, 2006 Author Share Posted August 24, 2006 The judge declared a mistrial because we were not unanamouis in our decision after deliberating a solid day on a case that should only have taken one hour to reach a verdict. One person would not compromise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PBBPaul Posted August 24, 2006 Share Posted August 24, 2006 What was the guy's reasoning behind the higher award? Our new and improved website Today's sample tune: Lonesome One Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billster Posted August 24, 2006 Share Posted August 24, 2006 Originally posted by PBBPaul: What was the guy's reasoning behind the higher award? I'll bet it was a policy limit on the guy's insurance, and the thought was that the insurance company (not the individual) was going to pay, so eff the company. Buy my CD on CD Baby! Bill Hartzell - the website MySpace?!?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PBBPaul Posted August 24, 2006 Share Posted August 24, 2006 Originally posted by Billster: Originally posted by PBBPaul: What was the guy's reasoning behind the higher award? I'll bet it was a policy limit on the guy's insurance, and the thought was that the insurance company (not the individual) was going to pay, so eff the company. I suspect that as well. I once sat on a jury in a similar situation and we had one of those guys too. He was willing to give the plaintiffs the farm just because he thought that only "the big evil corporation" would get hurt. Fortunately, we were able to come to a middle ground and arrived at a decision. It was still more than I would have been willing to give but was not obnoxiously excessive. In my situation, we were talking like $3 mil vs. $40K. We ended up at around $100K. Our new and improved website Today's sample tune: Lonesome One Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billster Posted August 24, 2006 Share Posted August 24, 2006 In Massachusetts, all references to insurance are supposed to be witheld from the jury. Of course with an auto accident everyone knows that drivers are required to have insurance, so Buy my CD on CD Baby! Bill Hartzell - the website MySpace?!?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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