When navigating the court system, a small business owner encounters certain risk factors inherent in litigation.
For example, during a trial, the judge will rule on what evidence is admissible and what evidence is to be excluded, and thus hidden from the jury. This further exacerbates the risks of a jury trial. Antiquated rules of evidence, which emanate from ancient England, often ensure that significant evidence never reaches the jury. And with significant evidence hidden from the jury, the jury's conclusions may not produce a just result.
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Recently, a jury awarded two individuals approximately $2 million in monetary damages against a Miami hotel. The two plaintiffs were shot while staying as guests at the hotel. They sued the hotel for negligence, on the grounds that the hotel failed to provide reasonable security.
At first glance, a finding of negligence doesn't seem to be that outrageous. However, the jury was unaware of one key fact: The police concluded that the two plaintiffs were shot when they were involved in a drug deal that went awry. The jury was never aware of this fact, as the judge ruled that this evidence was inadmissible.
The judge invoked a commonly used rule of evidence that dictates evidence is inadmissible when the "prejudicial effect" of the evidence outweighs its "probative value." The "prejudicial effect" refers to the likelihood that a jury would act emotionally and seize on this one piece of evidence to decide the case, while ignoring all of the other evidence. The "probative value" refers to the extent that the evidence actually proves an essential element in the case. The presumption really is that juries lack the intelligence to be able to properly weigh evidence, which of course is a logical inconsistency.
Apparently, in this case, the judge believed that upon hearing this evidence the jury would have immediately found that the defendant was not negligent, based solely on this one piece of evidence. Of course, virtually everyone (aside from the plaintiffs and, perhaps, the judge in the case) realize that this would have been the right result. Certainly, hotels should not be charged with the duty of providing security for drug dealers. That the jury was prevented from hearing this evidence meant that a result occurred that few people would find was reasonable.
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How can a sound, reasonable result be expected when important evidence is hidden from the jury? This result is because the rules of evidence are the product of an English tradition that has no place in today's society. Specifically, the rules came from ancient England, when uneducated "commoners" or peasants served on juries. Judges, the product of the noble class, had little or no respect for jurors. They believed that jurors were incapable of higher reasoning and, thus, unable to sift through and weigh all of the evidence. This had to be done by the judge, who would screen the evidence for the lowly jurors.
While jurors today can be influenced by emotions, they typically are educated and capable of hearing and weighing all of the relevant evidence. While antiquated, the rules of evidence persist today in the United States only because of another hallmark of the English system: tradition.
In fact, arbitration cases have discarded these rules of evidence. In arbitration, these rules simply do not apply, and thus the arbitrator is able to hear and weigh all of the evidence. The results usually are more reasonable, offering proof that elimination of these rules is possible and desirable. In a jury trial, as in an arbitration hearing, all of the relevant evidence could be admitted. The judge's role could be limited to simply reminding the jury that a particular piece of evidence is just one piece of the puzzle and must be weighed along with all of the other evidence.
Nevertheless, the rules do apply in jury trials. Because of the emphasis placed on tradition, it is unlikely that this will change in the near future. The fact that the jury is precluded from hearing key pieces of evidence raises the distinct possibility that an unreasonable, and unjust, result will occur in a trial.