Jury trials - bad for business

Federal Court Boston - 2008. Trial day nine. Late afternoon. Gerah vs Siemens. Comp-ensation dispute. Nine jurors - eight want to go home. The consensus verdict is $3.3 million. I’m the last holdout – for an award of zero.

I’m awestruck to live in civil society where nine of us are empowered to make the decision. The Magna Carta forced King John to let his subjects decide trials. I feel a primal responsibility to justice. We have power. Not the judge, not the lawyers, nor police. Nine subjects, correction, nine citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A formula triples any injury to the plaintiff, hence $3.3m. I’m STILL holding out for zero.  

For nine days of testimony, jurors feel that ‘the man’ and two sharp New York lawyers have been screwing the ‘little guy’ - a well-paid salesman for Siemens Business Systems. Complex issues, unclear law. But, I see no merit in the claim. The salesman resigned. His documentation is thin. Siemens followed policy. The merits of the case augur for dismissal. 

The other jurors are angry at me. One threatens me. I hear a grinding wheel sharpening pitchforks. I smell torches being dunked in oil. The jury: eight men, one woman. One black juror, nine white. A fitness instructor, a PhD, a business analyst, two computer programmers, an insurance salesperson, two occupation unknown. Three read the Boston Herald - Fox news in print. No one is reading the Wall Street Journal. 

Someone suggests $1.5m to split the difference between zero and $3m. Americans like an underdog. All want the right to BECOME rich, but many disdain the wealthy. A company is not a person, it is abstract, wealthy, capricious – Siemens ‘can afford it.’ A rounding error on €77 billion in revenues.

My jury experience is a cautionary tale that juries bias against power and wealth.  My fellow capitalists, navigate at your peril between the rabble and the elite!