Lawsuits may be interesting but unnecessary
By DAVE DANFORTH Daily Press Staff Writer
At the start of court last Wednesday, Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Robert Letteau tried to put his jurors at ease. The 3-day trial should produce “kind of an interesting case,” he said. Evaluating it would be “relatively easy.” He reassured their obvious skepticism by assuring them the case hadn’t settled for “legitimate” reasons.
But by Monday, the judge had changed his tune. With the jury out of earshot, he became miffed enough to threaten a mistrial over a sticky issue in the jury instructions which might turn a 3-day case into a 10-week one. Letteau’s growing irritation might have paled compared to that of some of the jurors. Nobody could blame them for continuing to wonder why the case, over a 1999 fire which broke out in the Culver City home of a graphic artist, hadn’t been long since settled. Indeed, the judge himself told the lawyers at one point that he didn’t think it was possible to determine why the fire started.
Down the hall, in the courtroom of Judge Linda Lefkowitz, a similar scenario was unfolding. During jury selection, one potential panelist wondered aloud why the case, a personal injury claim by a 60-year-old set designer, hadn’t settled. Judge Lefkowitz was left to hum the same tune as Judge Letteau: telling potential jurors that a case hadn’t settled for good reason without actually telling them why.
It is a familiar story to jurors, who, many observers say, are growing increasingly impatient that their service is required — at $15 a day — over injury and damage liability cases which they believe should have been settled.
More worrisome is the prospect that jurors could hold one side or the other responsible for their indentured servitude, swinging the outcome of the trial. The two-part nature of liability cases almost appears too inviting to pass up — declare they can’t find fault, and jurors won’t have to sit through more proceedings to award damages.
Judge Letteau felt compelled to bring the issue to the surface Monday immediately before closing arguments were to begin.
The issue of juror malcontent has spawned proposals for change, but few can say whether they will work or not. One change involves the “one-day, one-trial” system. Rather than have a potential juror on the hook repeatedly for jury service by remaining in an available “pool,” jurors not chosen to serve on a panel the first day would be excused for the next year.
Another reform, which has attracted debate, involves curtailing the length of questions during jury selection. It is this process which doubly irritates some. First summoned to show up with scores of others, potential jurors then must sit through questions about a particular case designed to ferret out their prejudices. Then, having stewed while waiting for the “voir dire” process to end, they are passed over, left for another possible jury another day.
Judge Letteau actually apologized to potential jurors last week for inadvertently keeping them waiting while he spoke with attorneys. It would never happen again, he pledged.
Some believe that changing expectations are at the root of juror discontent.
“There’s a sophistication level now that they know insurance is involved and they know most of these cases settle,” said Josiah Boggs, a defense attorney in the case before Judge Lefkowitz. That has underlined the need for judges to warn potential jurors against wondering why cases don’t settle and why an insurance companies don’t own up.
Yet the insurance question cuts both ways, Boggs added.
“It used to be that they’d say ‘insurance can pay,’” he noted. “Now, they worry that their premiums might go up.”
If jurors have to stew, at least they can do so in comfort. The Santa Monica Courthouse is renovating the juror waiting room — where multiple potential jurors have to hang out before the jury-picking starts. The makeover is scheduled to be complete in July and the architects’ rendering suggests it should compete with a world class airport lounge.
Whether the case before Judge Letteau is actually as interesting as he suggests also will be up to the jurors. Jeffrey Ganz, 41, a lifelong graphic artist and musician, is suing landlord Clarence Taylor. Ganz claims the 1999 fire which destroyed much of his work and took the life of his dog was due to an electrical flaw at the home.
Taylor’s lawyers say Ganz was at least partly to blame by overloading the circuits or building shelves which might have involved driving a screw into a conduit.
The other case in Judge Lefkowtiz’s courtroom involves Ildefonso Goris, a “greensman” who had risen to the top of his profession designing outdoor sets when an accident on the set of a May 2000 commercial injured him. He’s suing Jackson Shrub Supply, which is suggesting that Goris hurried its employees into unloading a bin of sand that broke the lift-gate of its truck.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 26, 2002. Read the original PDF.