26 September 2008

I suppose if i'm keeping track of things here i should note that i spent this past tuesday/wednesday at the indianapolis city/county building serving jury duty on the case of middle aged black people vs old possibly wealthy dead woman who wasn't dead when she was sued.

mabp wanted compensation for pain and suffering due to an auto accident that opwdw has admittedly caused.

mabp 1 was the woman who was struck by opwdw's car. she had reoccuring back pain. she saw a doctor about it alot. she went to chiro. he cleared her to return to work. then she took up a job lifting 60 lb boxes. back pain returns.

mabp 2 was the husband of the woman, looking for loss of consortium money - he testified that they hadn't had sex since the accident. she testified that they had had sex 1-2 times a week after the accident. something ain't quite right here.

mabp 2 asked for $300,000 - $500,000 for the loss of consortium. his wife didn't ask for specific monies, but the total came up to around $750,000 if you figured in medical cost and stupid crap.

we, the jury, awarded mabp2 (the husband) $0.
she got $15,000, which was a roundabout number for the damages prior to her returning to work and taking a job lifting.

since we finished, i've had second thoughts on giving her that much money. it was a number i came up with in the deliberation room as a starting point - her total bills over the past three years divided by 3 (which would basically cover the time before she took a job lifting)

it was a starting point. i started to argue for less but everyone else was happy with the total. so i agreed.

the end.

by the way, jury duty is slightly interesting, but also very boring.

1 comment:

Jason said...

Did jury duty last year for a similar type of case. Ended up giving the woman about $50,000, which was a third of what they were looking for but 10 times what the insurance company suggested to us.

You can sue for not having sex? What is he suppose to do if he had received money? Buy hookers?