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Shankman v. State7/13/2005
inference that that the jurors felt bound to an agreement to stick with the average once it was arithmetically derived, whatever that number turned out to be. As juror 1 stated when initially asked by the court, the allocation of forty-two percent liability for Stephen was not his vote. He then added, in seeming response to the court's follow-up explanation for needing to know about verdict unanimity (" ou just have to tell me if you agree with the vote"), that " eah. We agree with it, that's a different question." Later in the midst of the court's exchange with counsel, the jury foreperson explained that each juror came up with his or her percentage "and then we averaged so we came up with a consensus."
It may well be that the jury took the time during deliberations to be certain that the verdict as calculated through averaging was an acceptable verdict for each juror then deliberating. We, like the panel below, cannot be certain from the exchange that took place. It is a close question whether one reasonably could conclude from the exchange that the jurors acted solely out of a sense of being bound in advance to a derived number when each said that he or she agreed with the verdict. However, it is because enough was uncovered to raise the specter of a prior agreement among the jurors, and an uneasy uncertainty about whether the liability percentages, which admittedly were derived by averaging, did reflect each juror's acceptance of those percentages as his or her final appraisal on that issue, that we must conclude that the court committed error in declining to inquire further to resolve those uncertainties when asked to do so by counsel. We hold that having been confronted by a specific request from counsel to inquire further, the trial court was duty bound to engage in further inquiry and to remove doubt about an illegal quotient verdict from the record for a reviewing court.
That the court did not do so in this instance requires reversal of the jury's verdict. The recommendation in Cavello was more than a take-or-leave-it suggestion. It was a roadmap on how to avoid reversible error when situations such as these arise. To the extent that the issue of "quotient verdicts" has not arisen in a matter before us for awhile, we take this opportunity to note our agreement with the Appellate Division holdings that have emphasized that quotient verdicts are impermissible when jurors have agreed in advance to be bound by an averaged amount of damages or of liability percentages, without preserving the right and duty to assent finally and comfortably to the number derived from the average. By preserving a juror's ability to say, yet again, that he or she is of the opinion that the amount calculated by the jury as a whole is acceptable to him or to her, we can be satisfied that the verdict represents the independent opinion of each juror.
And, thus, the jury will be permitted to fulfill the supremely important role entrusted to it in our jury trial system. See Kennedy, supra, 18 N.J.L. at 458 (Hornblower, J., concurring) (commenting that "in this country . . . everything which a man holds dear, his life, reputation, liberty and property, is, in our court, placed in the hands of jurymen").
We require much of jurors. They "are sworn to try and determine the facts and law honestly, and make their verdict the result of deliberation and strict inquiry for the truth, applying their best, impartial and unprejudiced judgment to the case, as made out by evidence". Ibid. Although that statement was made in 1842, current expectations placed on jurors have not diminished. Indeed, our present model jury charges emphasize to jurors that each must maintain his or her individual judgment when de
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