Have You Ever Served On a Jury?

Served on a jury about ten years ago. Brother was suing his sister for medical expences resulting from a fall down a flight of stairs on her property. Brother was renting an upstairs apartment, with an outside stairway. He came down the stairs early one January morning to start his truck, noticed ice on several of the bottom steps and went back up the stairs. Ten minutes later he came down the stairs carrying two bags of trash and slipped on the icy steps and injured his knee. Had to sit there listening to the lawyers all day with the pictures and diagrams (with the paragraphs on the back)...really boring stuff. Started our deliberations around 4 PM, worked thru dinner and determined the amount of damages that the brother was to receive. I argued that the brother knew about the icy steps from his 1st trip down the stairs so he was partly negligent; which reduced the amount of his settlement. When we broke for lunch earlier in the day, I saw the brother and sister having lunch together at a restaurant across the street from the courthouse. Didn't get home until after 9 PM...long day.

I've received several notices for jury duty for the Federal District court in Minneapolis (over an hour drive from my house), but fortunately have never had to report for selection.

P.S. One potential juror showed an hour late from the assigned start time. Guy got hauled up to stand in front of the judge who railed on him for about ten minutes about his responsibilites as a citizen.

Glasses can affect your vision; especially when they have been emptied several times.........

Mal practice case against 4 MD's and hospital. First juror picked, heard 3 day's of testimony and the plantif settled. She settled for 1.5 mil. If she didn't, I believe she would of got doubled.

Pure neglect by hospital and everyone involved!!

Four times, years ago.
- Trucking company sued somebody for fire damages to cargo, something like that. Something to do with functionality of a fire alarm.
- A woman sued the mother of a teenage drunk driver who crashed into her car and cause major body damage. Got to see the wonders of plastic surgery, among other things. The mother appeared unconcerned that her young daughter was already a raging alcoholic who had previously wrecked two cars (both in DUIs), flunked rehab and wasn't even supposed to be driving, finagled keys to her brother's/mothers car, two twelve packs in the car plus open cans. A regular Paris Hilton. Spoiled rich kid.
- A real estate dispute involving a limited partnership--hard to follow and boring; the judge woke himself up snoring more than once.
- A guy exposing himself around a neighborhood. A real dirt bag.

Had to go in lots of times. One time during the preliminaries the judge was a real hard-ass about letting people out of the jury pool. This one case was to start this day and probably last 2 more days. He was not accepting anybody's reasons to be excused from the pool.

A man raised his hand and told the judge that his little boy was in the Children's Hospital, had been diagnosed with some awful kind of cancer and tomorrow they were to meet with the doctor to find out what kind of treatments the kid was in for. His voice trembled telling this. The judge asked "well, can't your wife meet with the doctor and get the information while you stay on the jury?" Everybody gasped and a loud murmur went through the room. The man then said "Well, judge, I guess we could do that, but I'll be honest with you and tell you that I am so worried about my son that I will not be able to give my full attention to the case." With that the judge said OK you can go. We were all about to start an uprising.

I would LOVE to sit on jury but apparently I cannot keep my (fair and imparcial) opinions to myself and have been excused each & every time.

Better not put me on a jury.

The cops aren't chasing around and arresting people just for doing nothing.


Rick

Let Casey whatshername (Anthony) tell you about that..