Latest in the Tennie Pierce (firehouse dog food prank) saga: Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez finds reader sentiment heavily taking the view that the $2.7 million settlement figure is stark raving bonkers (Dec. 3). He speaks with Chief Assistant City Atty. Gary Geuss to get a feel for how the number was arrived at:
“The mediator said Pierce would be a good witness, his wife would be good and his daughter was going to get on the stand and start crying,” says Geuss….
In one case that went to trial two years ago, an L.A. cop got $4.1 million in a racial discrimination and retaliation case despite having made his own disparaging racial remarks.
Juries tend to jump at the chance to stick it to employers, Geuss said. When prospective jurors are asked if any of them have had issues with their bosses, “About 90% of the hands go up.”
Geuss began doing the math….
The L.A. Times’s news side, according to blogger Patterico, has begun belatedly acknowledging some of the flaws in Pierce’s case (Dec. 3; Jim Newton, “Dog food lawsuit a test for L.A. mayor”, Dec. 3). Earlier: Nov. 11, Nov. 22, Nov. 29, Dec. 2.
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The problem is that, through voir dire, plaintiffs’ lawyers can ensure that the seated jury is unrepresentative of the voting public at large. The problem is worse in LA, which is unusual in that jury service is determined by neighborhood, so one can forum-shop within the city itself, as the DA’s office was criticized for failing to do in the Rodney King-beating and OJ Simpson prosecutions.
None of which is simplified by the ubiquitous Batson challenge, under which plaintiff’s lawyers traditionally challenge the defense (or prosecution’s) exclusion of racial minorities from the jury. Never mind that plaintiffs just as calculatingly seek to have juries as loaded with racial minorities as possible (and let’s please not start hyperventilating about “stereotypes,” because everyone knows perfectly well what’s going on). I’m not aware of a legal challenge to the attempt to seat a juror solely BECAUSE of their race.
But more broadly, cases like this indicate to me that the inherent power of juries themselves — supported, I realize, by elements far left and far right — are in need of scrutiny. The jury looks at the case before it and ignores outside concerns (fine – the judge even tells them to). It sees a chance to “get even” with a bad guy (fine – I’d like to myself). But when it socks through a four-million dollar award based on nothing more than its whim, other social concerns (the defendant’s, the consumer public, the insurance-paying public, the tax-paying public) are heavily implicated. It’s a pretty obvious example of moral externalities run amok. One way to rein this in would be to set statutory damage caps or even specific amounts. Emotional shock and outrage, if proven by a preponderance of the evidence, = 10K, 50K or 100K.
Caps is what it will eventually have to come to in most very area except actual economic damages. Caps are a crappy solution, but still MUCH less bad than the current status quo, and we can’t seem to get anything else passed, so…
Emotional damages I find ridiculous, as ridiculous as crimes based on the victim’s mental state (without any requirement that the victim make his/her feelings known).
Laws should prevent actions that can be described in terms that a third, or first, party can know. So damages for causing harm, extra damages for cruelty, no extra damages for hurting anyone’s feelings.