Did you know there is underway right now an effort in the Georgia Senate to eliminate your Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial in medical malpractice cases? That’s right. A bill has been introduced (again), SB 86, that seeks to eliminate jury trials in medical malpractice claims. This bill…
What is apportionment? How does it affect my case? What does it mean? Can I ever get justice in my case with it? These are typical questions I often get from my clients in personal injury cases. The issue of apportionment comes up now in just about every case…
I recently had jury duty in DeKalb County, Georgia, where I have been a resident for 15 years. In 15 years, I have received a summons for jury duty two times. I have never served on an actual trial jury. This is the ironic curse of being a trial…
Today I read a funny article about a jury trial in Florida in which the jury sent the trial judge a note asking for a whiteboard and markers and a “big bottle of wine.” I thought that was pretty cute. Going to trial is a big decision. Although I have…
Can a jury believe what it sees? That may seem like a stupid question, but a new study confirms it’s not. G. Daniel Lassiter, Ph.D., of Ohio University, recently conducted a series of experiments using focus groups and videotapes of criminal interrogations. Mock juries were shown exactly the same interrogation, but…
The recent jury verdict in the Coach Jim Donnan trial surprised me. I thought the jury would find him guilty. That’s because, unlike the jury, I never heard all of the evidence admitted in court. All I heard was the media’s spin on things, which led me, without a doubt…
The easy answer to the question I pose above is an emphatic “Yes!” Right? For any homeowner to have his or her home wrongfully foreclosed upon and scheduled to be sold at auction on the Courthouse steps, as we still do here in Georgia through nonjudicial forclosures ( a topic which…
I have been watching with great interest news reports on the Oscar Pistorius trial that is going on right now in South Africa. Oscar is known as the “Blade Runner” as he runs on prosthetic legs and was the first person with prosthetics to run in the Olympics, not the…