Voir dire polling shows public opinion predisposed against corporate defendants

Evidence

One of Cheeseman’s partners had called Facher last fall and explained a plan to hire Litigation Sciences, a firm that specialized in jury research. Was Facher interested in sharing the costs? Against his better judgment, Facher had reluctantly agreed to contribute twenty-five thousand dollars for a telephone poll of five hundred potential jurors in the Boston area. Facher personally regarded “scientific” jury research with skepticism, although the field had become quite fashionable among many trial lawyers and his own partners at Hale and Dorr. A month later, Facher went to a meeting at Cheeseman’s firm, where he received several pie charts based on the telephone interviews. The pie charts told him that he could not hope to win the Woburn case. Eighty-two percent—409 of the 500 people interviewed—felt that large corporations should, as a general rule, be held responsible for damages in toxic waste cases. Among those people who knew of the Woburn case from newspaper articles or the television news, 77 percent had already decided that both Grace and Beatrice were responsible for the leukemia deaths. Given responses like these, the jury research expert told the lawyers, the best the two defendants could hope for was simply to “contain” the damages. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 1509

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to past highlights on how reputational and institutional trust is engineered and defended — here defendants buy data about the public’s distrust of them. — connects to: Whether bias stems from animus or statistics matters little to defendants; Voir dire filters biased jurors through unlimited for-cause challenges judged by the court — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 830; Court composition, public opinion, and justice attitudes explain the Bowers-to-Lawrence reversal. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1210 (+6 more)
• SEED: Angle: when a defendant’s own jury research predicts a loss, settlement becomes a rationalization market — could pair with the Milgrom piece on information institutions.

Broader Connections

• Whether bias stems from animus or statistics matters little to defendants #corroborates (1.00)
• Voir dire filters biased jurors through unlimited for-cause challenges judged by the court #expands (1.00) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 830
• Court composition, public opinion, and justice attitudes explain the Bowers-to-Lawrence reversal. #complicates (0.70) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1210
• Factual hearings rarely shift entrenched public opinion #complicates (0.70) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1145
• News coverage prominence shifts how heavily people weigh issues in political judgments #complicates (0.70) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1404
• Manufacturing public doubt about evidence is a deliberate corporate strategy for harm denial #complicates (0.70) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1658
• Forum choice between state and federal courts favored corporate defendants #complicates (0.70) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2378
• Minority distrust of the legal system may shape their verdicts #complicates (0.70) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 914
• Individual juror bias studies may not predict deliberating jury verdicts #complicates (0.70) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 913