Jury Awards and the Recession
The Maryland Daily Record has an article today on a Baltimore County jury which has awarded $44,000 for attorney’s fees to a Hunt Valley lawyer from his former client, a home builder.
Except for the expert witness fees I receive when I’m acting as an expert witness in legal malpractice cases, our firm does not bill by the hour. So I found nothing about the specific fact pattern of this case that I think is interesting to personal injury lawyers or their clients.
What I did find interesting was the plaintiff’s lawyer’s conversation with the jurors after the trial with respect to an 18 percent interest rate on outstanding invoices as outlined in the lawyer’s retainer agreement. The jurors apparently said they did not think 18% was appropriate given the current economy.
The case almost does not seem serious enough to use the words “jury nullification.” But that is exactly what it is, right? The jury ignored the law because it thought justice in today’s economy mandated a different result.
It is going to be interesting to see the impact the recession will have on personal injury verdicts. Because good data on verdicts usually has a one year lag time, we are not going have an empirical idea of any change in verdicts for quite some time. For now, we are just trying to read the tea leaves. This verdict is an interesting leaf but I’m not really sure whether this kind of thinking has any application to personal injury cases.
Comments
No doubt the current economic climate will impact verdicts in certain cases. A related question that trial lawyers should consider is whether they should approach some aspects of trials differently given the current economic situation and prevailing climate? The national mood is quite different than 18 months ago and jurors personal economic issues may impact the way they view and decide cases.
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Posted by: Dan Berexa | December 21, 2008 9:34 AM
We have seen that plaintiffs lawyers tend to do better during times of recession. Jurors have more empathy when they are struggling as well. I expect to see jury awards to trend up the next couple of years. In addition the plaintiffs bar has the added benefit of a democratic administration and an easing of if not a reversal of many tort reform policies of the past decade.
Posted by: Bill Tilley | February 16, 2009 8:21 PM