Word count: 919 | Reading time: 4 min read
Pretzel Logic
Even as the jury deliberates the fate of Krichmar vs. Raab, workers step up the effort to dismantle Courtroom B at the stately old John Wanamaker Building. In all likelihood, this automobile-accident dispute — on which I have the pleasure of serving as juror No. 8 — will be the last case ever tried in this severely cramped court, which looks more like a broom closet with chairs and a fancy desk than a hallowed hall of justice.
The court system no longer wants to pay the rent, about a million dollars, for Courtroom B and several others, which make up the Court of Common Pleas’ complex litigation division. So it is moving the whole kit and kaboodle across the street to City Hall, and trash bins are starting to fill with the collected remains of years’ worth of lawsuits.
The foulest stenches, however, waft not from the bins, but from the attorneys, who pout and yell at each other and turn a simple story about an accident that should take about five minutes to tell into a 15-hour ordeal.
Courtroom B isn’t going out with a bang, but with a malodorous stink bomb.
The good news about jury duty in Philadelphia is that the court personnel who deal with the hundreds of potential jurors called each day to serve their public duty do a great job of explaining the process in a humorous, good-natured and calming manner.
Every time I have reported for jury duty, I have found the people running the system were absolute professionals, doing their best to make a bad situation palatable.
Face it: Who wants to take time out from their busy lives to schlep into Center City, pay for parking or public transit, wait for hours to get called for voir dire and, if picked, actually sit through days, if not weeks of testimony, all for the princely sum of $9 per day?
It is no wonder that so many people blow off jury duty notices, tossing them in the garbage without even a thought. The situation finally reached a head last year when the courts instituted a jury scofflaw court, dragging in people who have ignored their notices and fining them up to $500. The program has been so successful that responses have increased and enough fine money has accumulated to buy coffee, donuts and bagels for those people who do show up for jury duty.
Given that I am an opinionated loudmouth with a newspaper column, a history of being sued (for libel) and a wide personal knowledge of judges and lawyers, it seems surprising that I would be impaneled. But last Thursday, for the second time in about as many years, I found myself sitting on a jury, once again in judgment of a civil case.
The last time, it was a medical malpractice case that the judge eventually threw out after we spent three very painful days listening to hour after hour of complex testimony in an antiquated City Hall courtroom where the normal sounds of justice were drowned out by the loud clanking of the HVAC system and the rattle of the Broad Street subway, which shook the whole building every time it lumbered in and out of the City Hall station.
This time, the case was far simpler. Or so it seemed.
At issue: Who was to blame for a 1998 car accident on Academy Road in the great Northeast?
Was it Steven Raab, a photographer who was driving a beat-up, old Ford pickup loaded down with about a ton of mulch he picked up from the Water Department? Or was it Galina Krichmar, an emigre computer programmer from the Ukraine?
This simple question was tortured by the attorneys into an ordeal that was seemingly outlawed by the Geneva Convention, leading one court official to grouse that he’d never seen so many objections raised in one day.
At times I banged my head again the wall as I listened to the lawyers drone on. Other times I was tempted to yell out legal advice.
Fortunately, this group of jurors, as with my previous group of fellow jurors, endured with camaraderie so raucous that the judge jokingly complained we were having far too much fun.
But like the other panel on which I served, these jurors, despite fatigue, contempt for the attorneys and hours and hours of just sitting around waiting for the pettiness to end, intently paid attention to the case. This group, which included a housewife, a teacher, a cook, a teamster and a caterer, among others, deliberated the facts as if this were a matter of life or death. We eventually found both parties negligent, with the defendant, Raab, 90-percent responsible.
Though the trial itself was an affront to justice, the parties involved could not ask for better people to judge its merits.
In an effort to increase participation in what is a solemn, yet all-too-ignored civic duty, there is a bill before the state legislature to increase the amount of money jurors get for serving.
This is a good idea.
But I have another suggestion.
Cases like Krichmar vs. Raab should be videotaped for mandatory viewing by people planning to file lawsuits, all too many of which are frivolous filings that do nothing other than waste tax dollars and the time of those who must interrupt their lives to serve as jurors.
This might not make being a juror any less inconvenient. But it would surely reduce the amount of nonsense jurors must endure.
