Jury Duty

One night in February, 2000, I and 11 other people finished work

as part of a jury on a civil trial that began the previous week in the

Circuit Court of Cook County. The litigants were a law firm, the

plaintiffs, who accused a woman of breach of contract for not

paying her bills. The woman was the defendant. The trial was held

in a divorce court, but for some reason it was the first case with a

jury in that section of the court in 20 years.

The plaintiffs said that the woman had retained their firm as he

legal counsel in February 1994, until July 1997, and that she was

responsible for paying the bill for the work the firm did on her

behalf over that time span. She had given them three checks in

the first year, totaling $21,000, but the firm had billed her

(month-by-month as they did work for her) an additional

$48,800.14. She alleged that after initially retaining the firm

for specific legal work, to be covered by the fees she paid, that

she and the firm had agreed that any additional fees should be

collected from her ex-husband.

The woman's husband was (and still was at that time) a doctor,

originally from Haiti. At the time of the divorce, the marital

estate was estimated to be in excess of $2 million. The man

took a good chunk of this money after the divorce (by

withdrawing it from a retirement account) and leaving the

country. A document read from during the trial said that he

took over $1 million with him; he claimed he spent half of it on

travels to Europe, and the other half he gave to a nun in the

Dominican Republic. It happens that the U.S. does not have an

extradition treaty with the Dominican Republic, so there is

nothing that can be done to get the money back. (After the

trial, one of the defendant's lawyers said that the man had

continued this practice - that is, making regular trips out of the

country just so he can shelter the money from the U.S. courts,

and his ex-wife.) There are two children from the marriage,

who are in their mother's custody.

The plaintiff's law firm was hired by the woman after her

divorce, and before a motion filed on her ex-husband's behalf

to "vacate" the divorce settlement. The motion was only

partially successful, but was enough to prolong things for

years after (and up to the time of the trial). In this trial, the
jury was supposed to decide if after the initial contract (all

verbal, nothing written) to defend her at the "vacate"

hearing, there was a second contract which specified the law

firm to pursue any further fees from the ex-husband. I, and

one other person, were of a mind to grant this in the woman's

favor. There was no hard evidence of a second agreement

(which doomed our position), but to me begged a significant
question. That is, when the law firm saw that there was going

to be a lot of work to do in this case, and when they looked at

both the woman and the man, who would be more likely to

pay?

The majority of jurors - 10 - said almost literally, "Of course,

the woman. She won the estate, so this gave her a means to

pay her legal bills." I was somewhat taken aback by this

attitude. To me, it seemed pretty clear that the man, with a

successful medical practice, unencumbered from having to

pay the mortgage on the house, or to directly support the

children, would be the best target. Not only this, but the

woman was left without any significant income, yet had to

care for two children and continue to keep them in a home.

Alas, this had no direct bearing on the decision the jury was

supposed to make, and could not be proven, at least based

on the evidence we had before us. Another point against the

woman is that when she finally sold the "marital" home, she

realized $120,000. She used this money toward the

purchase of a new home costing about $520,000. The law

firm, though not saying so in so many words, had hoped she

would pay them with some of this money. This idea is

bolstered by the fact that the firm stopped representing
the woman the day after they found out that she had sold

the estate home and then used the proceeds to buy another.

In any case, in the jury room there were two of us who were

disposed to finding in the woman's favor, or if we decided for

the plaintiffs, to award them no, or little, money. However,

we reached this point at 5:30 pm, after about an hour of

deliberation, and most of the 10 others were eager to finish.

There were also 2 or 3 people who felt that they could not

come back on Tuesday to complete our work, so there was

added pressure to come to an agreement before we left the

room, instead of taking some kind of break, whether

overnight or otherwise. It literally came to the point where

the two of us were told, "All right you guys, there are 10 of

us who think the law firm should get all of what they are

asking, prove to us why they should get any less." This was

not a comforting situation to be in, especially because there

was very little evidence pertaining to what the judge had

instructed us to rule on. Both I and the other man could

only offer not much more than our hems and haws, and it

was getting to the point where we had to come up with
evidence, or give in. (If it had been a criminal trial, it would

have been more justifiable to be intransigent; in this case, it

seemed reasonable to negotiate among us to come up with

a decision we could all support.)

After more discussion about various "exhibits" entered as

evidence by both sides during the trial, I finally came up

with a suggestion that would allow us to award the law firm

less than the full amount, and do so based on an evidentiary

document. The document was a letter the woman sent to the

firm in February, 1997 in which she complained that a junior
partner had taken over her case. That the junior partner

was on the case was a fact; among the evidence was detailed

billing showing who, what and how long work was done on

behalf of the woman by the firm. Her complaint was that she

had negotiated with the senior partners of the firm and

expected them to handle her case. My suggestion was that

we should deduct any work the junior partner did on the

case from the time she wrote the letter until the firm

stopped representing her. After some discussion, this was

seen as an acceptable compromise, and we set to calculate

the amount of the reduction. This was made simple because

of the itemized bills produced by the law firm, and we soon

determined that the junior partners work from 2/97 to 7/97

was valued at $8,000. We deducted another 10% of this

amount, to cover administrative overhead the firm likely

billed for relating to his work, and came to an amount
of $40,000 to award to the law firm.

This was agreed to, and in just a few minutes the paper we

were all to sign reflecting our decision was passed around

the room. After letting the sheriff know we reached a

decision, we had to wait another 15 minutes for the

interested parties to reconvene in the court room. While
we were waiting, I joked that if the plaintiffs were late, we

would reduce the amount of the award by $1,000 per

minute, but that didn't go over very well. Once we

reentered the jury box, the envelope containing the paper

we signed was given to the sheriff, who handed it to the
judge. The judge, James Donegan, read our decision

silently, then handed it to the court administrator to read

aloud. She did. I detected no obvious visible reaction by

either side. The administrator then queried each of us as

to whether "this was, and is it now" our decision. Once

each of us responded affirmatively, the judge declared the

trial over.

I was left feeling that the woman shouldn't have had to pay

that much, that the work the law firm did do wasn't worth

$70,000 to the woman, especially in light of the fact that

they did very little to attempt to get money from the

ex-husband. I also wondered how it came to be that my
interpretation of the facts of the trial were so different

from the majority of other jurors.