July 11 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 1 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“What if we abolished peremptory challenges?” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

More: In a followup post, Welch quotes passages from my 2003 article and confirms that, alas, the same practices are going on today, at least in New York City: the rigorous exclusion of jurors with any expertise or familiarity with difficult technical issues, and independent-minded people likely to be “thought leaders”; the avid efforts to plant preconceptions about the facts and issues of the case and extract individual “promises” of favorable votes, with no judge present; and so forth. There were hopes the round of reforms introduced by then-Chief Judge Judith Kaye some years back would clean up New York’s awful voir dire (jury selection) process, but clearly it hasn’t. Much less nonsense tends to go on in jury selection if the judge is present, and a key to the awfulness of New York voir dire — and its empowerment of lawyers — is the judge’s absence. Plus: Ilya Somin weighs in.

“How jury duty almost turned me into an anarchist” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Abolish the peremptory challenge” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Newspapers are used in the parrot’s cage.” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Great moments in jury service is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 24 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

In May 2001, Cheryl Jane Hale was driving four children to a sleepover in her 1987 Ford Bronco. She didn’t bother to have the children wear their seat belts, so, when she took her eyes off the road to argue with the backseat passengers, and thus drove off the road and flipped the car, 12-year-old Jesse Branham was thrown from the car and suffered brain damage. A jury in Hampton County, South Carolina (the second jury to be impaneled—the first one was dismissed in a mistrial when it was discovered after two weeks of trial that five of the jurors were former clients of Branham’s lawyers) decided that this was only 45% Hale’s fault, held Ford 55% responsible, which puts Ford entirely on the hook for $31 million in damages.

On Monday, the South Carolina Supreme Court reversed because of prejudicial closing arguments that relied heavily on inadmissible evidence. More importantly for lawyers practicing in South Carolina, the Court adopted “the risk-utility test with its requirement of showing a feasible alternative design.”

How bad of a judicial hellhole is Hampton County? Though Hale was a co-defendant, she cooperated with the plaintiffs throughout the trial in their case against Ford, even sitting at the plaintiffs’ table; but because the judge classified Hale as a co-defendant, it meant that Hale got half of the peremptory challenges of the “defense.” More from Comer; no press coverage that I’ve seen yet. (cross-posted from Point of Law)

Update: Branham v. Ford is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system