Elephants and Reasonable and Prudent Blind Men

I just finished 9 days of jury duty and, as with the numerous other times I’ve sat in judgment, I was once again amazed at how differently 12 people can view the same set of facts and testimony.

We, the jury, walked into the jury room to deliberate and I was amazed at the diversity of opinion. The jury instructions, which were four pages of single spaced type written text, took 15 minutes for the judge to read in court. They continually stressed that the jury should use, as a standard of behavior, the actions of “reasonable and prudent” people when dealing with the issue of negligence.

The overall testimony indicated that the defendants had followed the letter of the law and had acted in accordance with the safety manual which applied to what they were doing…BUT…the plaintiff said “they could have done more” because people responding to the actions of the defendants not only acted “unreasonably and imprudently” but they flagrantly violated the law.

Despite the fact that the plaintiff’s expert witnesses never presented any viable “could have done more” options, five jurors felt that the defendants “could have done more” and wanted to find for the plaintiff. The mere statement that “they could have done more”, with no proof whatsoever that more could have been done, was enough for them.

It’s like the blind men experiencing the elephant. One touches the elephant’s side and declares the elephant is like a wall, while another feels the leg and declares the elephant is like a tree, and a third, touching the tail, declares the elephant is like a rope. People can look at the same evidence and arrive at conclusions that are poles apart.

After five hours, the vote went from 7 to 5 for the defendant to 8 to 4. Finally, on the third day of deliberation, fatigue and, in my opinion, common sense and reasonableness and prudence set in and the vote suddenly went to 11 to 1, crossing the 9 to 3 threshold necessary for a verdict. We found for the defendant. And I was freed from bitter bondage.