Want to know who your foreman is going to be?

 
(Image courtesy of stockxpert.com)
Next time you pick a jury, see if this study concluding that leaders emerge by talking early and often is correct.  Is the person who spoke first and the most in voir dire the foreman? More accurately, if you talk to jurors afterwards, ask how they picked the foreman. Did he/she lead the group [...]

Lessons from voir dire… don’t upset Cubs fans

Just a quick story from a recent trial.
Here in Illinois, and probably everywhere Cubs fans reside, people thought this was the year the Cubs would go back to the World Series. That didn’t happen. Not too long after the Cubs were eliminated from the playoffs, I had a two day jury trial.
There were four attorneys, [...]

A reason for your clients to reconsider chiropractic treatment

Most car accident cases involve some level of injury to the neck and/or back. Sometimes it’s just a strain that lasts a couple of days – sometimes it’s more severe.
Many victims of car accidents go to a chiropractor for treatment. Sounds reasonable, right? Not always.
I’m not a doctor. I don’t pretend to give medical advice [...]

Jury Duty – it’s not about the case, it’s about the dating potential

One of my paralegals alerted me to this article on MSN today – 10 offbeat places to meet guys. Of note: #3 – Jury Duty.
 Having never picked up a guy or served on a jury myself, I can only imagine how that works. It makes sense – you spend 8 hours a day with someone [...]

Medical Malpractice or Medical Mismanagement?

The Deliberations blog points us to a post from David Swanner at the South Carolina Trial Law blog. Mr. Swanner’s post points to the fact that medical malpractice trials are becoming harder to win, and suggests the following way to help the jury understand the case:
Don’t call it “medical malpractice” – call it “medical mismanagement.” [...]

Has a prospective juror heard about your case? Strike ‘em!

Sometimes, as we pick a jury, we run across someone on the panel who has heard about our case. This happened to me with several jurors in my last trial. The jurors who had heard about the incident were reluctant to really say everything they remembered hearing, but I really had the feeling that they [...]

Verdict makes news – again

I blogged the other day about a jury trial I won in Henry County Illinois. There is another article about the trial and verdict in the Kewanee Star-Courier today. This one doesn’t need registration, but it has been very difficult to load for some reason.
(Howard Zimmerle is a personal injury attorney in Rock Island and [...]

Jury selection – do I pick more men or women?

Picking a jury is one of the most discussed and agonized-over topics in all of trial practice. One of the big questions is demographics – what types of people should be on the jury?
I’ve always believed that pure demographics (age, sex, income, race) don’t help much, if at all, when picking a jury. Many lawyers [...]

Henry County Jury Verdict Makes News

I had a jury trial in Henry County last week in a case where a guy shot a teenager with a shotgun. The case and the verdict were both interesting, so the local newspaper picked up the story, which ran today. If you’re a subscriber, you can click here – otherwise read these snippets from [...]

What Jurors Think of Your Personal Injury Case

The Deliberations Blog provided a link to a survey from Vox.com. The question from the survey was “Have you ever served on a jury? What was your experience?”
I think the results from the personal injury cases were fascinating:
“It was a minor car accident involving a taxi driver and the teenage girl that hit him. He [...]