 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Hamilton v. Oppen12/4/2002
tunity for individual participation. To show that a quotient verdict has been rendered, one of the essential elements which must be established is that through an antecedent agreement the jurors bound themselves to abide by the results of the quotient process. In some jurisdictions, however, it has been held that no express agreement is required, but that a tacit understanding or an implied agreement is sufficient. Moreover, it has generally been considered sufficient to show that only part of the jury was involved in the antecedent agreement or understanding, and in a few jurisdictions it appears to have been recognized that it is enough to show that a single juror's assent to the verdict was induced by his understanding that he was bound to abide by the quotient. But if the jurors, although bound initially, subsequently abandoned their agreement to be bound by the quotient, or if the use of the quotient process was merely experimental and was never intended or assumed to be binding on any of the jurors, the verdict is not invalid as a quotient verdict.
North Dakota caselaw demonstrates it is not the act of averaging the individual jurors' estimates that is improper in a quotient verdict, but it is the prior agreement to be bound by the result of the computation that invalidates the verdict. See Seibel v. Symons Corp., 221 N.W.2d 50, 59 (N.D. 1974); Great N. Ry. Co. v. Lenton, 31 N.D. 555, 563, 154 N.W. 275, 277 (1915). The trial court in this case instructed the jury in accordance with N.D.J.I.-Civil C-74.40:
QUOTIENT VERDICT
If you award damages to the Plaintiff, you must avoid using a "quotient" method by which the Jurors agree in advance to write down the amount each Juror considers to be a proper award, add the amounts together, and then divide the total amount by the number of Jurors and make the result the amount to be awarded as damages. Likewise, any other method by which the Jurors agree in advance to "split the difference" or to "strike a happy medium" between divergent estimates of value must be avoided. Those methods are illegal and must not be used or considered by you in arriving at any award of damages in this case.
Rule 59(b)(2), N.D.R.Civ.P., specifically provides, "whenever any juror has been induced to assent to any general or special verdict or to a finding on any question submitted to the jurors by the court by a resort to the determination of chance, the misconduct may be proved by the affidavit of any one of the jurors." See also N.D.R.Ev. 606(b) (allowing a juror to testify "whether the verdict of the jury was arrived at by chance").
After the trial, Hamilton's attorney spoke with one of the jurors, and obtained an affidavit from him outlining his recollection of the method used by the jurors to decide the verdict:
The method was agreeing to average the percentages. This seems to be against what the Judge had originally instructed, but since Wilbert, and some of the others were of the opinion that this was of the correct method I went along with this, and agreed to be bound by the results.
There was disagreement as to the percentages, and therefore what was done, each party took the percentage that they had determined individually, these percentages were added together and divided by 10 for the number of jurors to determine what the final percentages would have been.
It was this amount that ended up being the jury verdict. I understood that this was the correct method of doing this, that I was in agreement with the verdict as being done by this method as a compromise. Personally, if I had not agreed to be bound by this method I would not agreed as I thought this decision was wron
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 North Dakota Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|