Day on Torts

     A recent opinion from the Alabama Supreme Court reminds us that  many things – even obscure things –  can cause a reversal of jury verdict.

        In Ford Motor Co. v. Duckett, No. 1090833, (Ala. 2/11/2011) a unanimous Alabama Supreme Court reversed a multi-million dollar verdict in favor of a plaintiff because the trial judge did not properly handle the jury selection process. The products liability trial was expected to last as many as four weeks, and the trial judge asked all potential jurors who were gathered in a jury assembly room to indicate whether they could serve during a three or four week trial. Those who indicated “yes” went through traditional voir dire. The defense objected to this course of action, saying that the judge was “asking for a jury of volunteers” in violation of Alabama law and that they were entitled to a randomly selected jury. 

        Despite the absence of any case law directly on point, the Alabama Supreme Court held this method of selecting jurors for participation in the ultimate jury selection process was inappropriate under Alabama law. The Court noted that while no one challenged the composition of the original jury pool, the trial judge committed reversible error when he reduced the size of the pool by asking who could serve for a trial expected to last three to four weeks. 

Yesterday I shared data on auto negligence cases from Shannon Ragland’s Tennessee Jury Verdict Reporter Year in Review 2010.  You can order your own copy of the publication here. 

Here is some other data of interest:

• There were 33 medical malpractice  jury trials in the covered one-year period.  The patient prevailed in 10 of those case.
• There were 16 premises liability jury trials.  The plaintiff prevailed in 4 of those cases.
• There were 2 product liability jury trials, and the plaintiff won both.
• There was one dog bite trial, and the plaintiff won it.

There is 15 verdicts of $1,000,000 or more, increasing the total number of million dollar verdicts for the last six years to 84.  The two million dollar verdicts in auto wreck cases last year involved drunk drivers.  One such verdict was discussed in the previous post.   I have been told, but do not know with 100% certainty, that the other $1 million verdict was against a man with very few assets and only $25,000 in liability coverage.

Shannon Ragland from Louisville, KY has a company called Jury Verdict Publications.  Shannon gathers jury verdict data in several states and  publishes a monthly report for each state.  He also publishes an annual review for each state, which includes all of the jury verdicts for the prior year and analyzes the data that he has gathered.  The annual review also includes data from previous years.

Over the next few days I will be sharing some of the data in the Tennessee Jury Verdict Reporter Year in Review 2011.  You can order your own copy of the book from Shannon here.

What I like about Shannon’s work is that he actually analyzes the information he gathers, unlike those that prepare the annual report on civil filings issued by the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts.  Please note that I do not intend to criticize the AOC by comment – it gathers data from others (court clerks) and simply publishes it.  Shannon gathers data and studies it.  Big difference.