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Old 11-04-2005, 10:10 PM
chadplusplus chadplusplus is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 42
Default Re: The jury system is a joke

To offer some contrast:

In the particular county in which I am soon to begin practicing (and in which I have been clerking for several years), juries are particularly hard on plaintiffs consistently under compensating for injuries.

For instance, my firm just had a case where liability was stipulated. We offered definitive evidence of loss of past and future wages, and expert opinion on long term pain and disability. Yet, the jury returned an amount of damages barely adequate to compensate for medicals. Unfortunately, I was not involved with the case enough to see such things as the special interrogatories to the jury so I can not state specifically how they allocated damages.

The point is: While some jurisdictions/juries may be allegedly overcompensating plaintiffs, others are consistently undercompensating.

The whole mock trial thing, while it may offer insights into the jury system, does not accurately represent the dynamics of a real jury. For instance, while in law school, our jury pool for our mock trials were selected from undergrad students - obviously not a fair and accurate representation of the general public. And I suspect that the mock trial in the OP was conducted under similar circumstances.
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