After a recent jury trial we spoke to the jurors and I can understand why, in the end, the jurors really know so little about how the jury trial actually works and worked.

So we are in the midst of a trial and we discover that there is a medical malpractice issue that could be involved in the case. What do we do about that medical malpractice component? You may or may not need to involve the malpractice issue depending upon how much coverage there for the underlying accident but assuming that you don’t know for sure and you’re the lawyer, you’ve got to look at the medical malpractice because as we discussed the statute of limitations for medical malpractice is different than for the auto accident.

We’re doing our closing arguments and the issue in the trial has been whether or not the elephant in the room has been addressed. The elephant usually is one of two things. Either there was no property damage, so how in the world could our client be injured, or the client had a prior injury and that’s really what was causing the injury –  didn’t have anything to do with this accident.

One of the things clients who are being deposed are told at the beginning of a deposition is that there might be objections by the client’s lawyer and then the client may be told to go ahead and answer anyway. That can be a little bit confusing – why the lawyer would be objecting and then telling saying to go ahead and answer. These depositions of course are under oath and therefore, whatever is said is testimony and can be brought up in court. Now if a possible objectionable question is asked by the opposing lawyer at a trial I would object right then and there and the trial judge might sustain the objection and the answer to that particular would never see the light of day.

Let’s say you have your client on the witness stand, you’ve spent hours training and going over all the questions and all the scenarios that could come about and then…and then,your client says something in response to cross examination that is from "left field",completely not expected, and something not good that could substantially damage the case. Possibly your client loses his or her temper and in so doing says something that is either inaccurate or somethingthat just doesn’t come across right. What do you do then?

We have spoken about jury trials, jury instructions, and then started talking about proximate cause and how that plays a role in jury instructions. We have spoken about the auto accident that brought us to the trial and a potential overlap of medical malpractice and how that would work.

The House of Delegates will be working on a measure to expand gambling as a special session continues in Annapolis.

Charges are being considered against a 20 year old Edgewater man who turned himself in hours after a body was found along an Anne Arundel County highway in a suspected hit and run.

So we are sitting at trial and the jury pool is brought in, and those are the jurors who we are going to choose from as to who’s going to be sitting on our jury. We get a list that encompasses their names, their addresses, their employment, their education, their marital status and often the wife’s employment.
 

We talked last week a little bit about making the call to the adverse insurance company and what you should say and maybe what you shouldn’t say. A client of mine brought it up to me last week when we were getting ready for a deposition.