For the fourth time! Can you freaking believe it?
I was really hopeful I might not get picked this time, and went into the jury box as opinionated as could be. No luck. I’m juror number 7. An asbestosis case, no less – grim stuff, lots of medical testimony, and then 12 of us to decide whether some guy deserves monetary compensation decades after the exposure happened.
Additionally, it’s down in Fremont, and jury trials in this courtoom are heard in the mornings from 8:45 to 1:15, so it’s not like they are speeding it along. It’s half days and then out the door. After two days I already felt like a trapped animal ready to gnaw it’s own limb off to escape.
The first time I was on jury duty it was a civil case in 1982 or ’83, involving a construction worker who fell and hooked his arm around a beam—the violent jolt of his arrested fall caused severe elbow joint damage. He subsequently was in physical therapy at a bay area hospital and alleged that the aggressive therapy caused even more damage. The two bones of his forearm suffered ossification, fusing them together and limiting his range of motion.
I do remember one of the attorneys cross-examining a medical expert (in that jovial courtroom manner attorneys have as they pal around) and telling us he had tried to get the doctor he was questioning for his client, but the other side got him first. Thus I learned of the lucrative trade in testifying as an expert for monetary gain.
After we heard all the evidence and closing arguments, things in the jury room did not go well. For me, back in my 20s, it began as an interesting experience in the machinations of the law and quickly descended into captive stress. Jurors did not agree. People were desperate to get out – one guy was a day laborer and pled with the judge to let him go, to no avail. Another fellow from New Orleans locked himself in the bathroom and said he couldn’t take it. He gave notes to the bailiff to take to the judge begging to be excused, but to no avail.
We were a hung jury, and afterward found out we were the second time through litigating the same case! Argh – how do you expect 12 laypersons to fairly determine advanced medical issues?
And now, almost 28 years later, here I am again. *Groan.*
Just to round out the fun, this doesn’t lessen my duties getting out the door in the morning. I still walk the dogs, et cetera, but now I have to make my way to BART to go southeast, the length of the Fremont line to the county courthouse out there, and then, when they spring us sometime between noon and 1:15, I get back on the BART train and go all the way in to San Francisco to do my job for a few hours before turning around and heading home.
So I’ve invested in some BART reading material, at any rate …
Hopefully it won’t be another medical issue.
I think you should take your selection as a compliment…there is nothing objectionable about you. =)
Much as I wish there were!
Thanks, Rayme, but both the civil trials I’ve been on have been medical issues; this time it’s asbestosis.
Oh dear, that sounds pretty close to my idea of hell: being stuck in a room with 11 of my peers while we try to agree on a tricky medical/legal responsibility issue for days on end. I hope it goes quickly.
You’ve got me beat now. I’ve served three times, once on a grand jury for 3 months (we met twice a week). This is the first place we’ve lived where I haven’t yet been called. (I may have jinxed it by mentioning it. lol!)
Good luck. I hope it doesn’t take up too much of your time/life.
Yeah, Trucie-woo, that’s how my mornings are spent now. First the usual dark stumble out of bed through showering, dressing, feeding the dogs, walking the dogs, etc., then off to Oakland and the BART train to spend half an hour headed SE out to Fremont, and another walk to the county courthouse. Mind-numbing testimony from 8:45 to 1:15, and then a 45 minute ride the other way off to *the job,* which, with walks, I often don’t get to until 2:30 or 3, for an hour or two of catch-up and then head home.
The good news is that it will end. Robin, good luck to you in jury avoidance in your most recent home!