News Flash: Lawyers Are Leaders On Juries

Monday's NFL/Oakland Raiders case from the California Supreme Court got a lot of attention this week, much of it from football fans happy to have something to talk about off-season.  Here at Deliberations, it's just another jury case, and it's a fun one. 

Note to self:  in next football voir dire, ask which teams they hate

The Raiders sued the NFL claiming the league should have given them more money.  (That's all the detail we need in a jury blog.)  It probably would have been cheaper to resolve  the dispute in a winner-takes-all game, but instead they went to trial.  The jury could not agree, but in California civil cases they don't have to.  They came back 9-3 for the NFL.

The Raiders moved for a new trial, attaching declarations from five jurors complaining about the behavior of two of their colleagues, Joseph A. and Linda H.  Joseph A., the declarations said, just plain hated the Raiders:

According to those declarations, Juror Joseph A. stated several times during deliberations that he hated the Raiders and their owner, Al Davis, and that he would never find for the Raiders or award them any money. Juror Alice I. declared: “Joseph [A.] stated to the group that he hated the Raiders and Raiders’ owner Al Davis. He also said to us that the Raiders were always starting lawsuits with the NFL, and that he would never award the Raiders any money or find for the Raiders in this case. [¶] I confronted [Joseph A.], along with several other jurors, saying that it was improper for him to make such a statement and to act that way. I also told him that he had filled out a questionnaire, and he had a duty to express his hostility in the questionnaire. [Joseph A.] responded to me ‘this is America’; that he had a right to express how he felt; that the questionnaire only asked him what his favorite team was, which he said was the New York Jets or Giants, and that the questionnaire did not ask which team he disliked. [¶] Jurors [Wayman J.] and [William S.] both told [Joseph A.], in the presence of other jurors, that this act of concealing his bias could cause a mistrial. [¶] [Joseph A. did not] attempt to explain his dislike for the Raiders in terms of any evidence he had heard during the trial; rather, his references to other lawsuits between the Raiders and the NFL and his other comments to the jury made clear to me that his bias against the Raiders existed prior to this trial.”

An "unofficial leadership position"

The problem with Linda H., though, had nothing to do with sports.  She was a lawyer.

The  declaration by Juror William S. stated that Linda H. “told the other jurors that the  Raiders’ lawyer did not want her on the jury, and that she would make them pay.”  The declaration of Juror Angelo C. stated that Juror Linda H., a lawyer, “exercised  an unofficial leadership position,” dominated the deliberations, and instructed the  jurors on the law. She “told the jury that if they voted one way on one of the  claims, they had to vote the same way on another claim, because ‘that was the  law.’ ” She also wrote out statements of the law and taped them to the jury room  walls; her statements were not quotations from the jury instructions “but were her  own words of what she claimed the law was.” She also told the other jurors that  Resolution FC-7 could not be a contract and that there could be no fiduciary  relationship between the NFL and the Raiders as a matter of law.

The NFL came back with declarations from Joseph, Linda, and other jurors saying it hadn't been like that at all.  The trial judge granted the new trial in a two-line order:  “The motion for new trial is granted. The Court finds that the objectively ascertainable acts of juror misconduct were prejudicial to the Oakland Raiders’ right to a fair trial.”

That wasn't enough for the Supreme Court.  In an opinion that's more about appellate review than it is about juries, the court essentially said that if the trial judge wouldn't at least tell them which juror he was worried about, they would shift the burden of proof to the Raiders to convince the Supreme Court there had been misconduct.  The pile of conflicting juror declarations, the court held, wasn't convincing, and so the NFL's verdict will stand.

I didn't forget the news flash

There isn't much new law made here, but there are still two points worth noting:

1.  California, land of the juror declaration.  Why did this case spend six years (it was tried in March 2001) in the appellate courts while the parties argued over the meaning of conflicting juror declarations?  Because in California, as we've discussed before, they can.  The California rules allow juror declarations to attack the deliberation process, where the federal rules, and most state rules based on them, do not.  California readers, if I have any, how do you keep this from happening all the time? 

2.  The promised news flash of the title.  This case can do a world of good for trial lawyers everywhere if they take just one lesson from it:  if a lawyer is on  the jury, she will lead the jury.  We've discussed this issue before too, but the word isn't getting out yet, so I'll just keep saying it.  Jurors look to their fellow jurors for whatever expertise they may bring, from plumbing to accounting to how much an injury hurts.  If a juror is a lawyer, other jurors will look to her to explain the law.  They just will.

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Note:  The case caption is The Oakland Raiders v. National Football League, and it's here.  How Appealing lists other coverage in posts here, here, and here. 

(Photo by ACDI/VOCA for USAID.  I know it's not the Raiders.)