HOUSTON – For the most part, courthouses are still pretty vacant. But when jury services do fully resume, new research shows there may be more Republicans determining the outcome of civil trials.
The first installment of Winston & Strawn’s “Recovery Threat Scenario Webinar Series” was put on today and primarily featured two speakers from Magna Legal Services who focused on jury selection in the COVID-19 climate.
The first and foremost question asked of the panel was: “Who will show up for jury service?”
To start things off, Dan Wolfe, a jury consultant with Magna, presented a poll stating that following the virus outbreak, 40 percent of those surveyed are now expressing health and safety concerns when and if called upon for jury service.
Magna’s research shows Republicans are more likely to show up for jury duty than Democrats. Also, young risk takers are more likely to show up than the elderly or those with health issues. Additionally, females expressed more concerns than males.
“We may start seeing a bunch of Harley riders in the jury,” Wolfe said.
Next to speak was Rachel York Colangelo, Magna’s national managing director of jury consulting.
She said trial lawyers should start considering the attitudes and values of potential jurors, as the more “politically conservative” are the ones more likely to show up.
Colangelo declined to share any direct insights she might have had on the topic, opting to only question what it might mean for corporate defendants to have more Republicans in the jury box.
“Will jurors have less faith in science? Are they going to be more friendly toward corporate defendants?” Colangelo said. “We all know juries can be unpredictable.”
Overall, Wolfe said people are becoming numb to the number of disasters hitting our world, calling it “crisis fatigue” – a condition that can impact how a jury assesses damages.
He also said the views of potential jurors have become very polarized, with people either loving or hating science or the government.
When selecting jurors, however, identifying polarizing viewpoints shouldn’t be all that difficult for attorneys though, according to Wolfe, as “jurors become unhinged” when trial lawyers ask them “to get real.”
“It doesn’t take much to prompt them anymore,” he said.
The last topic explored by the panel was “reptile brain theory” – a belief that humans are animals and will lash out once their health and safety is threatened.
Colangelo said the plaintiff’s bar has applied the theory to jury trials by making jurors feel as if corporate defendants jeopardized their safety.
She said trial lawyers implement the “reptile strategy” in hopes jurors will deliver “nuclear verdicts” as a means to punish corporate defendants.
“Jurors are feeling vulnerable just by virtue of being there and will be more susceptible to the reptile strategy,” Colangelo said.
To combat the strategy, Colangelo said defense attorneys should empower jurors by revealing the “smoke and mirrors” act and giving them real science.
Winston & Strawn did not give a date for the webinar’s next installment.
Founded in 1853, Winston & Strawn is an international law firm with nearly 1,000 attorneys in 16 offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.