I was reading another thread about the Lily Ledbetter case and it noted that the jury in the original case had found that Goodyear had indeed discriminated against Ms. Ledbetter. Once a jury decides on a point of fact, is that that? Can a party appeal on the grounds that the jury was prejudiced against them or is that done away with in voir dire? If so, how does one go about proving that?
Thanks,
Rob
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: it’s possible that the losing party can appeal on the grounds that the verdict isn’t supported by the evidence (i.e., the evidence doesn’t prove, to the extent required by the burden of proof required in that case, the facts required to be proved by the prevailing party). In these cases the evidence on the trial record is assessed by the appellate court in the light most favorable to the verdict–in other words, the appeals court is going to bend over backwards to affirm the jury verdict as long as there’s any evidence on the record that can be said to support it.
I’ve never had to deal with the issue in my undistinguished legal career, but it is possible to challenge a jury verdict based on evidence that some sort of impropriety has taken place in the deliberation process–a juror receiving a bribe to vote for a particular verdict, for example. I’ll leave the explanation of how that can happen to someone who knows more about that process–one of the practicing lawyers who hangs around here, more likely. I do recall at least one (maybe more) criminal convictions which have been overturned because of sexual improprieties between a juror and one of the sheriff’s deputies who was charged with supervision of the jury during deliberations. It’s possible that such improprieties might be grounds for reversing a civil jury verdict as well.
(In the criminal case I mention, supposedly someone tipped off the defense lawyer that the deputy in question was smugly bragging around the courthouse that while he was supervising the jury in question he’d received a blowjob from a particularly hot female juror, saying “It’s a dirty, lousy, stinking job, but someone’s got to do it!” The more I think of it, though, that one may not have been reversed on appeal; the trial judge may have held a hearing, vacated the verdict and declared a mistrial, since ISTR that the report of the misconduct in question was brought to the court’s attention in the 30 day period before judgment on the verdict became final.)
The losing party can appeal any attempted challenges of jurors for cause which are denied by the trial court. I forget. There has to be a particularly good record made at trial in order to preserve the error for appeal, and my recollection is that it’s a pretty difficult allegation of error for the losing party to win on, especially if the losing party was able to have that juror excluded from the jury via a peremptory challenge, which arguable would cure that error.
Beyond that, I’ll defer to the practicing lawyers here, who will undoubtedly rise up as one and correct all my errors of fact and law here. It’s (thankfully!) been over two decades since such questions have been any real concern to me, and I’ve lost touch with more recent cases on these questions.
Cheers,
bcg
It’s also possible to challenge the verdict on the grounds that the judge improperly allowed the jury to see some evidence that should have been excluded, or vice versa. If such an appeal is successful the court would typically have to hold a new trial, so that a new jury could consider the issues on a proper evidentiary basis.
That’s true; I was parsing the OP to be asking if there were any situations where the jury’s verdict could be overturned for reasons other than prosaic evidentiary errors.
Cheers,
bcg