THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 3, 1997 TAG: 9702030033
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 116 lines
The first two juries were practice. The last one was real.
The two mock juries heard a horrific tale of a young Norfolk man crushed by a 16-ton concrete wall and his ongoing struggle to live. So did the real jury.
The mock juries were moved by the victim's sincerity, pluck and loyalty to family. So was the real jury.
The mock juries awarded the victim huge damages: $17 million and $20 million.
So did the real jury.
On Wednesday, a jury in Portsmouth Circuit Court awarded $20 million to David J. Mraz, who survived the freak truck accident near Charlottesville in 1994. Lawyers believe it is the biggest jury verdict ever in Virginia.
(The victim will actually receive $17.5 million, less about $5.8 million in lawyers' fees, under an agreement with the insurance company.)
The verdict was stunning not just because it was big, but because it bore out the opinions of two mock juries that heard the case during a practice trial two weeks earlier.
For lawyers, the verdict was vindication for the victim and for a relatively new system of trial preparation - a system rarely used in Hampton Roads.
It is impossible to know how often mock juries are used here, but the lawyers say this was the first time they had heard of it being done.
``What happened in this case is it came out dead-on, bull's eye,'' says David A. Ball, a consultant from Durham, N.C.-based JuryWatch Inc. Ball helped the plaintiff's attorneys prepare for the Mraz trial.
``Based on what the mock juries told us, I would have been utterly shocked if this had come out anything less than 10 or 11 million dollars, maybe 9 million dollars, in that range,'' Ball says.
Experts warn, however, that not every mock jury is so accurate.
``It is not precise by any means at all. It is not a science,'' says Ronald Matlon, dean of the College of Communications at Towson State University in Maryland, and executive director of the American Society of Trial Consultants.
``You can get 12 or 20 or 30 people (on a mock jury) who are not anything at all like the people you get on the (real) jury,'' Matlon says. ``What it does do is give you an idea of whether a certain idea or certain issues will sell with the jury. It will tell you how to improve in court.''
One thing a mock jury can do is tell a lawyer roughly how much his case is worth - how much to ask from a jury and how much to demand in a settlement.
In the Portsmouth case, Mraz's attorneys - Jeffrey A. Breit of Norfolk and Bruce D. Rasmussen of Charlottesville - hired two mock juries to do just that. It was the first time either had used the method.
``The main concern was: Can we, as lawyers, properly evaluate this kind of case?'' Breit said after the verdict. ``You're getting in a range that none of us had ever been in, that no lawyer in Tidewater had ever been in.
``If the mock juries had been at $10 million, then $8 million starts to look very good (for a settlement). You have the prospect of no appeal and the client has the security of knowing it's all over.''
Said Rasmussen: ``This is a case an attorney may see once or twice during a lifetime.''
The case involved a horrible, permanent injury to a young man with a wife and four children.
Mraz, 37, was driving a Honda Civic on a two-lane road when a tractor-trailer passed going the other way. The truck was carrying a 10-foot-tall concrete wall upright in the trailer bed. The wall was held in place by two straps and a cable.
Somehow the straps snapped and the wall fell onto the Civic, crushing the driver from the waist down. He spent nine months in the hospital, lost a leg and his spleen and went home in a wheelchair. He racked up $925,000 in medical bills before the trial, and could expect about $2 million to $3 million more over his lifetime, experts said.
His lawyers hired JuryWatch to help evaluate the evidence and witnesses and determine what the case was worth.
Two weeks before trial, the lawyers put on a mini-trial for 24 mock jurors, a randomly selected group of Portsmouth residents designed to approximate the real seven-member jury that would hear the case.
One Saturday, the mock jurors gathered at a downtown hotel. They watched Breit and Rasmussen question the victim, his wife and two doctors. They watched a defense attorney cross-examine the witnesses. They heard opening statements and closing arguments.
When it was over, the group split into two mock juries and deliberated in front of a video camera. They also filled out forms and commented on each witness and the lawyers' arguments.
They found Mraz and his wife very sympathetic.
``He is very articulate and . . . has made something of his life,'' one juror wrote.
``He was a kind-hearted person who loved his family very much and wants to be able to do for himself,'' wrote another.
What weighed most heavily, the mock jurors said, were Mraz's severe injuries.
``There has been extensive mental, emotional and physical suffering,'' one juror wrote.
``David is in for a lifelong battle physically and mentally and should be compensated,'' wrote another.
In the end, the mock jurors' remarks were similar to those from the actual jurors.
In deliberations, the real jury settled almost immediately on a high dollar award based on Mraz's severe injuries and the clear liability of the concrete company and trucking company, one juror said.
A single holdout who wanted lower damages kept the jury from ending the case quickly, the juror said. The jury deliberated eight hours.
One factor in the verdict was the intransigent defendants, each of whom blamed the other for the accident.
``We didn't like the fact that they didn't accept responsibility,'' said juror John DeGroff, a 39-year-old mental health technician.
The most important factor, though, was the victim's injuries and the fact that he was completely blameless.
``This man has enough things to worry about. The one thing we can stop him from worrying about was money,'' DeGroff said. ``We talked about it (the next day) and we all felt good, that we did the right thing.''
This was exactly what the mock jurors had told the lawyers two weeks earlier.
``It helped us see the case through the eyes of the jury,'' Rasmussen said.
``This was not a lawyering case. The victim and his wife and the damages talked volumes,'' Breit said. ``The mock jury really, really thought he (Mraz) was a hero. And he is.''
KEYWORDS: MOCK JURY