Bored by Justice - my time as jury foreman in federal district court
My time in the jury box
I was surprised to get a jury summons this year, after going to Multnomah county jury duty a few years ago (I didn't have to actually serve then). Turns out it was for the federal district court this time, and they don't care if you served county jury duty lately. I could have gotten out of it by claiming financial hardship since I own my own business, but I've never actually been on a jury and I wanted to see what it was like, and do my part blah blah.
The case, in a nutshell
Basically, a company that sells brakes and parts to truck manufacturers and such are based on the east coast, and their one sales rep for the west coast is based in Seattle. One of his benefits was a company car, which he paid taxes on for his personal miles. It's a rental, so really it's his car during off-work hours. One friday night he gets drunk with some friends, naps on the couch and gets up at 4am to drive home. He is still wasted, and somehow drives up the paved MAX lightrail tracks until it goes into a tunnel, which he follows for over a mile until his car is wedged and he's ordered via bullhorn to get out. They arrest him for DUI and a couple other things, and release him. Total damages were around 60k. He leaves a message for his HR rep at the company on Saturday, and they talk on the phone Monday morning. He tells her he got high-centered on a lightrail track, that no one was hurt, and that he got a DUI.
The local news had a field day, covering it in detail and playing the security cam footage with relish:
http://www.katu.com/news/15801882.html
He failed to mention any of this to the company, obviously hoping they wouldn't find out. To his credit, he immediately sought out alcohol treatment and claimed to be sober a year during the trial. The company discovered the video on their own, and were so pissed about being lied to and embarrassed like that that they fired him in a knee-jerk decision.
It was our job to decide if they were discriminating against a disabled person when they did this, but the legal language truly had its head up its own ass. More on that later.
Jury Selection
We showed up at 8:30 because they wanted us at 9. This is how your government works. Pathetic, and yet sort of necessary since people can't be depended upon to act like adults. Of course I didn't see anyone show up late, so we all wasted a half hour. Next they took us to the courtroom where they picked half of us (12) to go sit in the jury box and get asked questions. The other half sat in the back as reserves should the judge excuse people.
First we got the chance to try to beg out of jury duty, and a couple people tried, complaining that they had business or work to do, etc... The judge didn't let anyone off the hook. Then ee were basically asked if any of the following would affect our ability to render an impartial verdict, only one at a time and tediously slowly:
Off we go
Then the plantiff started with their opening argument... no instructions, nothing from the judge about what we should be listening for or the point of law it was our job to decide, just dive right in. The entire trial was an exercise in spoon-fed BS. The openers were tediously long, written for a 5 year-old who had never seen law & order. I guess you have to explain certain facts, but it would be nice to be talked to like an adult.
What I found most surprising is how much irrelevant garbage was forced upon us. Every witness spent between 5 and 15 minutes answering the most ridiculous questions, like what their job is, what their work experience was... and then the other lawyer would get up and ask many of the same opening questions. At one point the plantiff called an expert witness, another lawyer who specializes in 'best practices' for HR departments and labor laws, etc. They spent at least half an hour talking about his credentials, work experience, blah blah all to show what an expert he is. What a waste of time.
Three full days of testimony. Roughly 6 hours/day of sitting in a rather comfortable chair having to pay attention, drinking coffee to stay awake at times. All the time going nuts because I have no idea what I'm supposed to be paying attention to. Does it matter if the company thought he was an alcoholic or just an asshole? Does it matter that they failed to follow best practices? Is an alcoholic disabled? Is it OK for a company to fire someone for off-hours behavior? Not a word on any of this until right before closing arguments.
Closing Arguments
Finally the judge tells us what the hell we're doing there. He says that alcoholism is considered a disability under the ADA, and that it's our job to decide if the firing company believed the plaintiff to be 'significantly limited in the major life activity of caring for himself'. When I heard that, I thought, "what the fuck have I been listening to the last three days? All that babble about alcoholism doesn't have much to do with his ability to care for himself.."
The closing statements were tediously boring, and had little to do with the letter of the law we were supposed to decide. The plaintiff's lawyers were busy trying to convince us that the firing company held deep bigotry towards alcoholics, although they were all drinkers themselves, and even had company events at wineries. The morons could have done something to actually prove it... They never got any other witnesses to admit the company had events at wineries, nor proved with a receipt the plaintiff's claim that he had shared 2 bottles of wine and multiple mixed drinks with his boss at dinner a few days before his incident.
Sit down and shut up
At several points I had questions, and I asked the clerk about it as he was shuffling us in and out of the courtroom. He said I could put my questions on a note and give it to him, and he would give it to the judge, but that I wouldn't get any answers. Finally I was so pissed I did write some questions down. Here they are:
1. Is there proof (like a receipt) of how much alcohol the guy and his boss had?
2. Can anyone confirm that company events had lots of alcohol?
3. What were the actual damages? All we ever heard were the preliminary estimates.
I can't remember the other 2. It doesn't matter, because the judge got the questions, and they had a sidebar, where they decided do ignore the questions. The judge said the lawyers could address them in their closing arguments, but they didn't do jack shit.
The mushroom jury
This is how our shitty system of justice works. The play is carefully scripted, all testimony was just a repeat of depositions taken more than 18 months prior. Not one question was asked that hadn't been asked long ago. All arguments and evidence had been pre-screened by the system to decide if we were allowed to know those facts or not. Any questions we had were fucking ignored, and resented. The point of law we were forced to decide on was so narrow that we had no choice but to find for the defendant. There was absolutely no way we could punish this company, even though they blatantly lied to us and fired him without giving him his due course, without asking him any questions, or ever even talking to him again after the initial phone call days before he was fired.
In order to find for the plaintiff, we had to say yes to all 3 of these:
1. the firing company believed him to be substantially limited in the major life activity of caring for himself. (note, not a word about alcoholism, although every word in the trial was about it).
2. The guy who was fired was qualified to do his job.
3. The company's beliefs about him (seeing him as unable to care for himself) was a motivating factor in firing him.
The legal system sickens me. It's amazing that any justice is ever done. It's a sign of the ultimate self-destruction of our society that the asshole lawyers make hundreds of dollars an hour for wasting my precious fucking time. Their arguments were transparent and insulting, many of their questions were nothing more than fancy-lawyer-trick-word-parsing, and their powerpoint slides were insulting. The entire trial shouldn't have taken a full day if there was any sense in our system.
Deliberations begin
Finally, we could start talking about the case. It was a huge pain in the ass to have only one thing in common with these 7 other people, and not be able to talk about it for 3 days. It wasn't until this point that we decided on a foreman. Only myself and one other guy wanted to do it, so we did the ol' rock-paper-scissors. I figured he would go with rock because most guys do that, and won with scissors.
Then followed 6 hours of discussion, much of which had nothing to do with the letter of the law we were given to decide. People were spouting off about how this guy deserves nothing because he screwed up in the first place, and how the company was wrong too, and both had lied to us... it was clear that several jurors had made up their minds before the trial even began. Hell one guy was loudly talking to me while the lawyers were giving the judge their list of jurors to excuse that he though the trial was stupid and would be an obvious decision. Amazingly, he made it into the jury.
Some jurors were dead-set on giving the guy nothing. They thought he deserved what he got and worse, and a number of them called him rich for making 80k/year. I didn't mention that 1) that doesn't make him rich and 2) I make twice that. Fact is no one who makes more than about 60k probably EVER serves in a jury, and fuck those assholes. It's you jackasses who are so concerned with your own precious bullshit that you can't take time out of your lives to contribute to the overall justice in our society. It's left only to those who don't think it's so bad making $40/day. That's a third my hourly rate. I had to take a number of PTO days to serve. But I digress.
Other jurors though the company deserved to be punished, but every one of us boggled to look at the language of the verdict form. We had to pick yes or no to 3 very specific questions, which might as well have been for an entirely different trial. The plaintiff spent the trial trying to convince us that the company who fired him was filled with bigots, while the defense was busy pretending it never even OCCURRED to them that this guy who got a DUI (and sent them his recovery plan and went to an alcoholism treatment center and whose doctor called them) was an alcoholic. Even their lawyer and HR head kept up the lies. What a bunch of assholes. They really think people are stupid.
I think we could have been in deliberations for days. We had intractable people on both sides, but I tried to keep people from taking hard positions. Most of us either believed or could be convinced that the company acted hastily, firing him at least in part for being an alcoholic. But at no time did anyone even try to show how that had anything to do with the 'major life activity of caring for himself'. We were saved from possibly days of pointless argument when I noticed the last sentence in one of the jury instructions. It basically said that if the company would have fired him anyway without any alcoholism-related bigotry, then we should find for the defense. We could all agree on that, but then we had to go back to the stupid verdict form. It forced us to say yes or no to the 1st question, and if that was a yes, then to proceed to question 2... Problem was that it was fully possible for the company to believe he was an alcoholic and still have plenty of good reasons for firing him. It took us another hour just to figure out how to fill in the stupid verdict form, since it didn't match up with the line in the instructions that we could all agree on.
Final thoughts
I was surprised to get a jury summons this year, after going to Multnomah county jury duty a few years ago (I didn't have to actually serve then). Turns out it was for the federal district court this time, and they don't care if you served county jury duty lately. I could have gotten out of it by claiming financial hardship since I own my own business, but I've never actually been on a jury and I wanted to see what it was like, and do my part blah blah.
The case, in a nutshell
Basically, a company that sells brakes and parts to truck manufacturers and such are based on the east coast, and their one sales rep for the west coast is based in Seattle. One of his benefits was a company car, which he paid taxes on for his personal miles. It's a rental, so really it's his car during off-work hours. One friday night he gets drunk with some friends, naps on the couch and gets up at 4am to drive home. He is still wasted, and somehow drives up the paved MAX lightrail tracks until it goes into a tunnel, which he follows for over a mile until his car is wedged and he's ordered via bullhorn to get out. They arrest him for DUI and a couple other things, and release him. Total damages were around 60k. He leaves a message for his HR rep at the company on Saturday, and they talk on the phone Monday morning. He tells her he got high-centered on a lightrail track, that no one was hurt, and that he got a DUI.
The local news had a field day, covering it in detail and playing the security cam footage with relish:
http://www.katu.com/news/15801882.html
He failed to mention any of this to the company, obviously hoping they wouldn't find out. To his credit, he immediately sought out alcohol treatment and claimed to be sober a year during the trial. The company discovered the video on their own, and were so pissed about being lied to and embarrassed like that that they fired him in a knee-jerk decision.
It was our job to decide if they were discriminating against a disabled person when they did this, but the legal language truly had its head up its own ass. More on that later.
Jury Selection
We showed up at 8:30 because they wanted us at 9. This is how your government works. Pathetic, and yet sort of necessary since people can't be depended upon to act like adults. Of course I didn't see anyone show up late, so we all wasted a half hour. Next they took us to the courtroom where they picked half of us (12) to go sit in the jury box and get asked questions. The other half sat in the back as reserves should the judge excuse people.
First we got the chance to try to beg out of jury duty, and a couple people tried, complaining that they had business or work to do, etc... The judge didn't let anyone off the hook. Then ee were basically asked if any of the following would affect our ability to render an impartial verdict, only one at a time and tediously slowly:
- Knowing an alcoholic
- Knowing someone with a DUII (almost everyone raised their hands for both, but I didn't)
- Being fired
Off we go
Then the plantiff started with their opening argument... no instructions, nothing from the judge about what we should be listening for or the point of law it was our job to decide, just dive right in. The entire trial was an exercise in spoon-fed BS. The openers were tediously long, written for a 5 year-old who had never seen law & order. I guess you have to explain certain facts, but it would be nice to be talked to like an adult.
What I found most surprising is how much irrelevant garbage was forced upon us. Every witness spent between 5 and 15 minutes answering the most ridiculous questions, like what their job is, what their work experience was... and then the other lawyer would get up and ask many of the same opening questions. At one point the plantiff called an expert witness, another lawyer who specializes in 'best practices' for HR departments and labor laws, etc. They spent at least half an hour talking about his credentials, work experience, blah blah all to show what an expert he is. What a waste of time.
Three full days of testimony. Roughly 6 hours/day of sitting in a rather comfortable chair having to pay attention, drinking coffee to stay awake at times. All the time going nuts because I have no idea what I'm supposed to be paying attention to. Does it matter if the company thought he was an alcoholic or just an asshole? Does it matter that they failed to follow best practices? Is an alcoholic disabled? Is it OK for a company to fire someone for off-hours behavior? Not a word on any of this until right before closing arguments.
Closing Arguments
Finally the judge tells us what the hell we're doing there. He says that alcoholism is considered a disability under the ADA, and that it's our job to decide if the firing company believed the plaintiff to be 'significantly limited in the major life activity of caring for himself'. When I heard that, I thought, "what the fuck have I been listening to the last three days? All that babble about alcoholism doesn't have much to do with his ability to care for himself.."
The closing statements were tediously boring, and had little to do with the letter of the law we were supposed to decide. The plaintiff's lawyers were busy trying to convince us that the firing company held deep bigotry towards alcoholics, although they were all drinkers themselves, and even had company events at wineries. The morons could have done something to actually prove it... They never got any other witnesses to admit the company had events at wineries, nor proved with a receipt the plaintiff's claim that he had shared 2 bottles of wine and multiple mixed drinks with his boss at dinner a few days before his incident.
Sit down and shut up
At several points I had questions, and I asked the clerk about it as he was shuffling us in and out of the courtroom. He said I could put my questions on a note and give it to him, and he would give it to the judge, but that I wouldn't get any answers. Finally I was so pissed I did write some questions down. Here they are:
1. Is there proof (like a receipt) of how much alcohol the guy and his boss had?
2. Can anyone confirm that company events had lots of alcohol?
3. What were the actual damages? All we ever heard were the preliminary estimates.
I can't remember the other 2. It doesn't matter, because the judge got the questions, and they had a sidebar, where they decided do ignore the questions. The judge said the lawyers could address them in their closing arguments, but they didn't do jack shit.
The mushroom jury
This is how our shitty system of justice works. The play is carefully scripted, all testimony was just a repeat of depositions taken more than 18 months prior. Not one question was asked that hadn't been asked long ago. All arguments and evidence had been pre-screened by the system to decide if we were allowed to know those facts or not. Any questions we had were fucking ignored, and resented. The point of law we were forced to decide on was so narrow that we had no choice but to find for the defendant. There was absolutely no way we could punish this company, even though they blatantly lied to us and fired him without giving him his due course, without asking him any questions, or ever even talking to him again after the initial phone call days before he was fired.
In order to find for the plaintiff, we had to say yes to all 3 of these:
1. the firing company believed him to be substantially limited in the major life activity of caring for himself. (note, not a word about alcoholism, although every word in the trial was about it).
2. The guy who was fired was qualified to do his job.
3. The company's beliefs about him (seeing him as unable to care for himself) was a motivating factor in firing him.
The legal system sickens me. It's amazing that any justice is ever done. It's a sign of the ultimate self-destruction of our society that the asshole lawyers make hundreds of dollars an hour for wasting my precious fucking time. Their arguments were transparent and insulting, many of their questions were nothing more than fancy-lawyer-trick-word-parsing, and their powerpoint slides were insulting. The entire trial shouldn't have taken a full day if there was any sense in our system.
Deliberations begin
Finally, we could start talking about the case. It was a huge pain in the ass to have only one thing in common with these 7 other people, and not be able to talk about it for 3 days. It wasn't until this point that we decided on a foreman. Only myself and one other guy wanted to do it, so we did the ol' rock-paper-scissors. I figured he would go with rock because most guys do that, and won with scissors.
Then followed 6 hours of discussion, much of which had nothing to do with the letter of the law we were given to decide. People were spouting off about how this guy deserves nothing because he screwed up in the first place, and how the company was wrong too, and both had lied to us... it was clear that several jurors had made up their minds before the trial even began. Hell one guy was loudly talking to me while the lawyers were giving the judge their list of jurors to excuse that he though the trial was stupid and would be an obvious decision. Amazingly, he made it into the jury.
Some jurors were dead-set on giving the guy nothing. They thought he deserved what he got and worse, and a number of them called him rich for making 80k/year. I didn't mention that 1) that doesn't make him rich and 2) I make twice that. Fact is no one who makes more than about 60k probably EVER serves in a jury, and fuck those assholes. It's you jackasses who are so concerned with your own precious bullshit that you can't take time out of your lives to contribute to the overall justice in our society. It's left only to those who don't think it's so bad making $40/day. That's a third my hourly rate. I had to take a number of PTO days to serve. But I digress.
Other jurors though the company deserved to be punished, but every one of us boggled to look at the language of the verdict form. We had to pick yes or no to 3 very specific questions, which might as well have been for an entirely different trial. The plaintiff spent the trial trying to convince us that the company who fired him was filled with bigots, while the defense was busy pretending it never even OCCURRED to them that this guy who got a DUI (and sent them his recovery plan and went to an alcoholism treatment center and whose doctor called them) was an alcoholic. Even their lawyer and HR head kept up the lies. What a bunch of assholes. They really think people are stupid.
I think we could have been in deliberations for days. We had intractable people on both sides, but I tried to keep people from taking hard positions. Most of us either believed or could be convinced that the company acted hastily, firing him at least in part for being an alcoholic. But at no time did anyone even try to show how that had anything to do with the 'major life activity of caring for himself'. We were saved from possibly days of pointless argument when I noticed the last sentence in one of the jury instructions. It basically said that if the company would have fired him anyway without any alcoholism-related bigotry, then we should find for the defense. We could all agree on that, but then we had to go back to the stupid verdict form. It forced us to say yes or no to the 1st question, and if that was a yes, then to proceed to question 2... Problem was that it was fully possible for the company to believe he was an alcoholic and still have plenty of good reasons for firing him. It took us another hour just to figure out how to fill in the stupid verdict form, since it didn't match up with the line in the instructions that we could all agree on.
Final thoughts
- Be afraid. It doesn't matter what you do, there is a jackass somewhere who can find some stupid fine print to sue you on.
- 50 wrongs made a right. I think justice was done, in spite of the incompetence of both sides' lawyers, the complete bullshit ignorance they forced on the jury, the pathetic lack of responsiveness to our questions, and the constant lies and boring bullshit in the trial. No fucking way should the ADA be used to protect people who are dumbass drinkers. Take responsibility for your fucking life.
- Lawyers made our system, they are the judges and they make the rules. They make themselves necessary by filling the law with the piddly bullshit they are trained to deal with. Exactly the same as all the CPAs who bribe congress into inflating the tax code to ridiculous complexity so they can have a job filing tax returns. Fuck all you assholes, you are leeches on the backs of this country. Get a real job.
- Thank god I don't live in another country, where the justice system is even MORE fucked.
posted by Dave Rants at
8:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<$I18N$LinksToThisPost>:
Create a Link
<< Home