Emch writes op-ed piece about Ohio Supreme Court decision that allows jury findings to be ignored
Posted by
Dale EmchJanuary 30, 2008 9:21 AMOhio has joined the ranks of some other states across the country that are willing to strip injured people of their rights in order to satisfy insurance industry and chamber of commerce lobbyists.
That the state General Assembly should pass such a law is not surprising. But it's shocking and disheartening that the Ohio Supreme Court would bless a system that automatically reduces jury awards for pain and suffering damages to $250,000.
Despite clear precedent that tampering with jury awards runs counter to the Ohio Constitution's mandate that the right to a jury trial shall be inviolate, the Supreme Court held for the first time that reducing a jury award does not interfere with a jury's fact-finding function. In its tortured reasoning, the Court determined that the mandatory reduction is just being done as a matter of law and does not affect the jury's fact-finding role. The rationale, and the caselaw used to support it, is shockingly weak given the reverence most of us have for the jury system.
I was so appalled by the Court's decision that I wrote an op-ed piece for the Toledo Blade that I'd direct you toward if you have an interest in seeing how one of our basic constitutional rights has been stripped. Below, I've included a small portion of the column.
In Ohio, the constitutional right to trial by jury has always been interpreted to mean that judges and the government won't be able to invade the jury's fact-finding function.That's why jurors are there, right? To hear the facts of each individual case and decide what they think is fair. Now, though, jurors can spend days or weeks hearing the facts of a case, reach a difficult decision that the injured person should be awarded a sum to compensate for the pain an accident has caused, only to have that decision gutted by a judge if the sum exceeds $250,000.
How does the right to a trial by jury remain inviolate if a law requires judges to violate the decisions a jury reaches? We should probably now read the constitution to say: The right to a jury shall be inviolate, provided it doesn't cost an insurance company too much money.
The right to have a jury determine the facts of a case has been the backbone of our legal system for hundreds of years. It serves as a check against a judge who might be corrupt or for some reason influenced by one side or the other.
It's a concept as old as our country and traces its roots to the Magna Carta. As the court's majority notes, Thomas Jefferson viewed jury trials as "the only anchor, ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
