Fw: Juries Find Their Central Role in Courts Fading

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From: " ilena rose " <ilena@...>

Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2001 10:36 AM

Subject: Juries Find Their Central Role in Courts Fading

> ~~~ thanx Ron ~~~

>

> March 2, 2001

> Juries Find Their Central Role in Courts Fading

> By WILLIAM GLABERSON The role of the American jury, the central vehicle

> for citizen participation in the legal system, is being sharply limited

by

> new laws, court rulings and a legal culture that is moving away from

> trials as a method of resolving disputes. ....

> " We as a society have to decide: Do we want to have our justice system

> essentially run by experts -- lawyers and judges -- or do we want to

> retain a role for the jury? " said P. Hans, an expert on juries who

> is a professor at the University of Delaware.

>

> Increased plea bargaining, tort-reform laws limiting jury awards, and

> Supreme Court rulings giving judges new power to screen the evidence

> presented to jurors are among many forces marginalizing the role of the

> jury, some lawyers and judges argue.

>

> Court statistics show, for example, that jury trials are a rapidly

> shrinking part of federal court caseloads , with only 4.3 percent of

> federal criminal charges now ending in jury verdicts, down from 10.4

> percent in 1988. The number of federal civil cases resolved by juries has

> also dropped, to 1.5 percent from 5.4 percent in 1962.

>

> And those awards that civil juries do make are being overturned with

> greater frequency. Federal appeals courts are reversing certain types of

> civil jury awards twice as often as they did a few years ago. ....

>

> Although jury trials in modern times have long accounted for a small part

> of the legal caseload, judges and other experts on the courts say the

> diminishing role of the jury in state and federal courts reflects rapidly

> changing attitudes about how much power jurors ought to have. The judicial

> system's commitment to the jury as an institution, they argue, is being

> tested as never before.

>

> " Why have a jury at all? " one former juror, McCarthy asked

> bitterly in an interview.

>

> Mr. McCarthy said he and his fellow jurors were outraged in December when

> a Houston judge told them that Texas' tort-reform law would require a

> reduction of more than $100 million in an award they had given the family

> of a pipefitter killed in an industrial accident at a Petroleum

> plastics plant in 1999.

>

> The worker, ez Jr., died when highly volatile chemicals

> exploded in a 500-degree fireball. The jury concluded that the accident

> had resulted from lax safety measures at the complex, which had

> experienced three explosions over 12 years, including one that killed 23

> workers and injured 132 others in 1989.

>

> Not everyone is critical of the trend limiting the role of juries. Some

> legal scholars, judges and business lawyers say that reining in juries is

> a necessity in an overloaded legal system. Others argue that juries must

> be controlled to limit excesses, and curb prejudices like hostility to big

> corporations.

>

> " Not every legal rule that constrains a jury's discretion is an attack on

> the jury system, " said F. Levi, a federal district judge in

> Sacramento. " It may be a limit on raw power, but that may be what we need

> to have a fair system. "

>

> Among appeals judges, the growing skepticism of juries is reflected by

> their increasing willingness to overturn verdicts. In an analysis

prepared

> for this article, M. Clermont and Theodore Eisenberg, law

professors

> at Cornell University, found that federal appeals courts reversed civil

> jury awards in injury and contract cases less than 20 percent of the time

> in 1987. Over the next decade, reversals rose to nearly 40 percent.

>

> For those jurors who do decide cases, the experience can be mystifying.

It

> can also be embittering.

>

> Last spring, Tyrone N. Neal, a retired government printing worker, served

> on a case in which a young man had lost a leg because, he claimed, of

> improper care in a land hospital. The jury Mr. Neal was on awarded

the

> man $5.4 million. When he learned during an interview that a judge had

> reduced the award to $515,000, Mr. Neal was disturbed. " It's like a slap

> in the face, " he said. " 'We get your opinion and then we just go decide

> it our way.' " Mr. McCarthy, the Houston juror, said his panel had

> concluded that only a big verdict would protect workers by showing the

> managers at Petroleum that there was a large cost associated

with

> the repeated worker deaths. The award was $117 million, including $110

> million in punitive damages, which ' lawyers argued was

excessive.

> They also said the complex was making strenuous efforts to improve safety

> for its workers.

>

> The judge told the jurors it would almost certainly be cut to $11 million

> under Texas laws that sharply limit punitive damages. " I felt betrayed, "

> Mr. McCarthy said. " You think you've done a good service to the community

> and then you find out all your work has come to nothing. " ....

>

> Last spring, E. Babiarz Jr., a Superior Court judge in Delaware who

> headed a state jury study, made a speech proposing that the use of civil

> juries be sharply curtailed. " It is simply impossible, " Judge Babiarz

> said, " to achieve fairness when each case is decided by a different group

> of 12 people who are called to serve on a civil jury perhaps only once in

> their lives. "

>

> In a new survey of 594 federal trial judges nationally, 27.4 percent said

> juries should decide fewer types of cases. The survey, conducted by The

> Dallas Morning News and the Southern Methodist University School of Law,

is

> to be published this spring in the school's law review. Some scholars

> argue that appeals judges are now substituting their own opinions for

> those of jurors. ....

>

> .... [T]he Supreme Court itself has done as much as any court in the

> country to accelerate the trend. In two major rulings in 1993 and 1999,

the

> justices directed trial judges to screen technical and scientific

testimony

> before it gets to jurors.

>

> The limits on juries are being instituted not only by courts but also by

> Congress and state legislatures. In a series of articles last spring, The

> Dallas Morning News found that, often through legislation, 41 states

> imposed some limits on the types of cases juries could hear. Included are

> rules banning jury trials dealing with issues like consumer fraud and

> suits over adverse reactions to vaccines.

>

> Some judges say jury trials are a shrinking part of the legal system

> because lawyers distrust them. They ask for jury trials less often and,

in

> turn, lose their ability to argue before ordinary people.

>

> " You have a bar that is increasingly lacking in jury skills, and they

> distrust juries so they stay away from them, " said Judge E.

> Higgenbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit,

> which hears cases from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

>

> In the land hospital case, two of the jurors said in interviews, the

> jury spent considerable time trying to find an amount that would

> compensate Gilford V. Tyler Jr., the man who had lost his leg as a result,

> the jury found, of the hospital's negligence. A spokeswoman for the

> hospital, Prince 's Hospital Center, said Mr. Tyler had appropriate

> care.

>

> The judge, P. of Circuit Court in Prince 's County,

> agreed that the jury's verdict had been fairer than the reduction to the

> $515,000 the hospital's lawyers demanded.

>

> " The thought that the injuries sustained by plaintiff are in any way

> compensated by $515,000, " the judge said in a hearing, was " abhorrent. "

>

> But in January he ruled that land law required him to reduce the jury

> award to the lower amount. Mr. Tyler's lawyers are appealing to

land's

> highest court, claiming the law is unconstitutional.

>

> In the meantime, the jurors who heard Mr. Tyler's case are wondering

> whether the legal system values the work they did. " In one sense, " said

> Pearson, a retired postal worker who was on the jury, " it does

> seem like a waste of time. "

>

> Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

>

>