I got selected to do jury duty. And I had to report to the West Jordan Court House bright and early Tuesday morning after the long MLK holiday. I got up earlier then I prefer and got all ready and headed out to the court house. I was a little early (8:15) but it warned to NOT BE LATE. I was handed a 4 page questionnaire.
As I filled it out (it was about malpractice and large lumps of sum awards) the questionnaire, I watched lots and lots of people file in. There were 70 of us called in but only 64 showed up. Seriously. Packed into a small jury duty holding room. Eventually we were called to line up in the hall in a particular order. Once lined up, we were lead into the courtroom. There were about 25 attorneys and other various members of the legal team combined. We were squished on benches and seats really tight together. They had us introduce ourselves to everyone and had a sheet of "get to know you" questions we had to answer to the entire room. Then we sat. And sat. Then we were slowly called one by one to the judges quarters to be further questioned.
On my questionnaire, I wrote that I don't know if I could be unbiased in a malpractice lawsuit. This obviously caused and issue for the legal teams. So they quizzed me. I explained that I don't really believe in malpractice lawsuits unless there is an extreme circumstances. That I had some serious medical conditions and it has NEVER occurred to me to sue my doctors. They pushed farther and I said a malpractice lawsuit might make sense if they amputate the wrong arm or give you 100 times a normal dose of the wrong medication but otherwise, we need to understand doctors are human. I was asked if I was already biased towards doctors. After a long pause, I said I guessed I was because I feel doctors are doing the best they can. They thanked me and sent me back to my tight little bench seat.
At 12:15, I asked if we were going to be excused for a lunch break. The baliff brought in a bowl of vending machine snacks (chips, cookies, etc) at 12:45. There wasn't a damn thing in the bowl that fit my diet. He said they hope to have a jury selected soon. At 1:30, they filled the bowl again. They were still interviewing the 65 of us they wanted to see. At 2:15, they came and got the bowl. We still had been locked in the court room staring at each other and trying to be amused. But I admit, I had lost it by then. I bought my knitting but the seats were so tight, I couldn't knit. By 2:15, I had my head on my hand on my purse in my lap. My back hurt from all those hours sitting on that hard bench and my head was swimming from lack of food.
At 2:30, the lawyers all came back in. And the judge explained that they were ready to do jury selection. They needed 10 people out of all of us and the case would be taking 9 days. And then the lawyers started staring at us and pointing and passing a paper back and forth regarding who they wanted in and who they wanted out. I can read upside down and I could see a big pink sticky note over my name. Is that in or out??? Finally at 3:00, they called 10 names. And I was skipped. Thank god.
I truly can't believe they made us go from 8:30 - 3:00 without lunch? I would have been fascinated with the case and I have no idea what the situation was. I stared at the woman plantiff for hours. She was a sweet older woman. She sat there for hours with a very straight face. I can only imagine how long she waited for her day in court. She had 4 attorneys but the doctor and hospital had 20. That seems really unbalanced. I hope the case goes well and the right result comes out of it.
I am very thankful I have a strong opinion and wasn't going to have to spend until next Friday in court deciding the future of this poor woman and her family or the doctors and hospital. How do you pick? For once I was really glad to be an "odd man out". I skipped out of there and immediately stopped for food on my way home. Unfortunately, it threw me so out of whack, I'm struggling with my diet. I did eat sugar and I'm very sad about it....because it tasted really good. But I am sure I will get back on track in the next day or so.
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