Customer Reviews

Business on Trial: The Civil Jury and Corporate Responsibility

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Valerie P. Hans's assessments of misinformation and disinformation about the civil jury may do little to overcome the propaganda of tort reformers except among well-informed citizens, but citizen who cares to learn more about courts and law than about rhetoric will profit from her book. Hans, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, tests claims about how juries treat businesses in civil cases. She assembles myriad charges, and then she acquits the civil jury system of nearly every specification. She often establishes a preponderance of evidence opposite to criticisms of civil juries.

The author proceeds so methodically and dispassionately as to win over every informed and open-minded reader. If there are no "Perry Mason" moments at which witnesses break down and admit that they were making it up as they went along, the "testimony" of purported experts is discredited all the more effectively by Professor Hans's fastidious craft and consistent fairness. (The author does establish that jurors tend to believe horror stories that have been discredited and sloganeering against litigants and lawyers, so jurors might still be derided for gullibility, just not by those who fabricate the tales and spread the slanders.

Professor Hans's findings diverge from common beliefs because she undertakes to replace anecdotes and assumptions with information and evidence. Her results, almost always consistent with research to date, issue from three methods of inquiry. The author interviewed 269 jurors from 36 civil cases that involved businesses or corporations and were tried to a verdict or a hung jury. She conducted a statewide survey of respondents' views of business regulation and civil litigation. In addition, she designed experiments with mock juries to focus on telling variables and contexts. Given this methodical and methodological resourcefulness, her findings must instill great confidence.

Hans finds that jurors are suspicious and even dismissive of victims and their grievances. Critics who assumed or asserted the ignorance of jurors may thereby have overlooked what jurors know well: everyday realities and everyday people. Because jurors believe that they understand what reasonable persons will or should do, plaintiffs often find civil juries a tough audience. Mindful that whiners and chiselers abound, jurors often begin cases presuming the plaintiff's culpability and become persuaded of the defendant's liability only slowly, reluctantly, and judiciously.

A few of Professor Hans's findings may pleasee tort reformers, however. Professor Hans shows that jurors expect more of corporate defendants than they do of ordinary individuals. Business defendants are expected to measure up to norms that physicians and other professionals must meet to avoid charges of malpractice. Dr. Hans reminds her readers that this tendency may be true outside the United States: Japanese jurors too tend to expect corporations to anticipate and to avert what less knowledgeable and less organized defendants might be forgiven for not having foreseen.

Hans concludes that juries simply are not pro-plaintiff as a general matter. She concedes that sympathy for civil plaintiffs and civil complaints may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. On the whole, however, she finds too little evidence for any pro-plaintiff biases among civil jurors. The evidence that Professor Hans and others have discovered, then, runs decidedly opposite to the common assertion that juries favor Davids over Goliaths.

Nor are most jurors anti-business, as those sympathetic to Goliath (or other Philistines) have insisted. When jurors expressed hostility towards business defendants, their judgments were explicitly based on outrages in particular cases.

The myth of "Robin Hood" juries that use trials to redistribute wealth found little support as well. However useful political invocations of "Robin Hood" juries may be, in practice such juries turn out to be about as fictitious as their namesake.

By taking critics seriously, Professor Hans has undermined their criticisms and credibility in a concise and compelling manner. Her labors need not, of course, affect attacks on civil juries or civil justice, since many or most of those attacks depend so little on valid premises and so much on expedient presuppositions. Nonetheless, Professor Hans has made it harder for the well-informed to claim that their opinions of the civil jury are based on expertise or experience rather than expedience.

Valerie P. Hans has written a thorough, carefully designed study of jury behavior in civil trials. While presenting information cautiously and academically, she thoroughly explodes several common myths about civil juries and makes a powerful (if understated) case for the preservation of the civil jury system. She begins with surveys and quotes, preferring to let her data speak for itself, until she draws final conclusions and points out areas for further scholarship. Hans does not over-generalize, but the book is often repetitive, in part because some of the studies and issues overlap. Even so, the information is trimmed to a manageable length. This is not an entertaining read, but we [...] find the information and interviews clear, useful and accessible. This is a particularly helpful book for law students and professors, litigators, reporters covering the courts, corporate legal departments and anyone involved in civil litigation, especially if you have a voice in selecting a jury.

Professor Valerie Hans has written a valuable book concerning the institution of the civil juries. This book shatters some of the myths of the civil jury commonly held by both attorneys and the public, and replaces these myths with well-researched information.

Many business executives believe that awards are based upon juries' sympathy for plaintiffs, and their view of businesses as having deep pockets. However, through interviewing jurors, Hans shows that the Robin Hood jury may be a myth, and that jurors often instead blame the plaintiff for their mishaps. Further research demonstrates that in two identical factual scenarios with jurors, where one company is described as wealthy while the other is poor, there is no signficant difference in the findings of negligence or in the amount awarded. Hans also works to reduce the image of a sue-crazy American society, by detailing the academic debate over the current status of lawsuits in the U.S.

Social science research is becoming increasingly important in understanding the role of juries and jurors in our American society, and this book makes an important contribution to that research.