Juries, Bless Their Little Hearts, They Try…
By Julia C. Rieman

But sometimes members of the bar and bench don’t make it too easy on them. Two cases in point:

Number One: Money Grubbing Consumers v. Innocent Appliance Dealer. In a class action litigated for about five years before trial we argued that the plaintiffs had no damages. At the close of the two-week jury trial the lead attorney for our side, in a stirring argument to the jury, lambasted frivolous lawsuits. And he told the jury, “If you believe that the plaintiffs have not suffered any damages, then send them a message and give them zero.”

After two or three hours of deliberation, the jury returned with their verdict. The plaintiffs’ lawyers nudged each other gleefully as the judge separated two verdict forms; this could only mean that the jury had filled out verdict forms awarding both actual and punitive damages. Then the judge read the verdicts… the jury had done exactly what we asked and had given the plaintiffs $0. Unfortunately, the only verdict forms that had a blank for inserting a dollar amount were plaintiffs’ verdict forms. So they found in favor of the plaintiffs and awarded zero actual damages and zero punitive _damages.

We will never know if that jury actually thought that our client had done something wrong or if they were just trying to do what we had asked.

Number Two: Big Bad Bank v. Poor Little Old Farmers. Big Bad Bank brought a foreclosure suit against Poor Little Old Farmers who counterclaimed for fraud and various other bad acts. The trial ran a week and into Saturday. The judge had informed us that he had a criminal docket on Monday, and we had to be done that week.

Before the jury retired to deliberate, the judge read them the jury instructions. Rather than deal with the pesky task of sorting out which instructions properly stated the law applicable to the case, the judge decided he would give all instructions submitted by both sides, 86 in all, some of which directly contradicted other instructions. Understandably the jury was out for awhile.

When they returned at around 10 o’clock on Saturday night, the judge called us all to the bench. This was not a good sign. It seems that just in case the 86 conflicting jury instructions didn’t make things interesting enough for the jury, the judge decided to throw in some comparative negligence verdict forms. These were the verdict forms that the jury found appealing and filled out. This would not have been a bad thing except that this was not a negligence case (see paragraph above on facts). While the judge and we attorneys were trying to figure out exactly what to do, the jury forewoman piped up, “Can’t we just go back with the right forms?” So they did, and they entered verdict in favor of both sides. The judge never would tell us what percentage of negligence the jury assigned to each side.

Then there was the time that one of my partners was trying a case and the jury sent back a note asking if they were allowed to award the plaintiff more than he had asked for… But that’s another story.

Thank goodness for our jury system. Bless their little hearts.

Julia C. Rieman practices in Enid.