Report Finds Anti-Business Bias of L.A. Juries Overstated
By AMANDA BRONSTAD
Staff Reporter
Forget the $28 billion an L.A. jury awarded a smoker last month against Philip Morris Cos. Inc., the largest punitive damages award ever issued in a single action.
L.A. jurors are not any less favorable toward businesses than those elsewhere, according to a survey by jury consulting firm DecisionQuest Inc.
While local results of the nationwide survey were anecdotal, Arthur Patterson, senior vice president of L.A.-based DecisionQuest, said in certain types of cases potential L.A. jurors were more receptive to business arguments.
“They weren’t as strongly negative toward corporations, as we found in the counties in the South and Northeast,” Patterson said. “That means fewer people were speaking out strongly that corporations are bad and can’t be trusted, and weren’t awarding as much to plaintiffs. L.A. people did not seem to be as strongly anti-corporation, in general.”
The findings fly in the face of the perception among corporate counsel, surveyed late last year by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that business does not fare well at the hands of Los Angeles juries, and against the rising tide of distrust of corporate interests nationwide.
For years, defense attorneys have derisively referred to the Central Civil West Courthouse in the mid-Wilshire area as “The Bank” because of the substantial plaintiff’s verdicts awarded there, said Marshall Grossman, partner at Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan LLP. Juries typically are drawn from within a 20-mile radius of a courthouse.
“I would hate to go to court in L.A. defending a cigarette company or a polluter,” Grossman said. “We have such a strong public attitude here against smoking and pollution that it would be difficult to find a jury in this community as balanced as one is likely to find elsewhere in those types of cases.”
But Patterson said his polling of potential L.A. jurors found they were more “lenient” when faced with cases involving asbestos, product liability and “environmental racism” where companies are alleged to have polluted minority neighborhoods than other jurisdictions.
He suggested that might be because there are fewer industrial businesses concentrated here than in Beaumont, Texas or Pascagoula, Miss., other areas in the survey. A high concentration of industry might make jurors more aware of environmental issues and increase the likelihood that they know someone personally who has been laid off or had some other negative interaction with a business.
National view
In the Chamber of Commerce survey, released in January, California ranked among the worst states in which a business can find a “reasonable and fair” trial. The Chamber interviewed 854 corporate house counsel between Nov. 7 and Dec. 11, 2001, at companies with at least $100 million in revenues.
That report created a backdrop for DecisionQuest’s project, which looked at juror attitudes toward big business given the corporate scandals that have emerged this year.
The Chamber’s State Liability Systems Ranking Study ranked the 50 states based on the corporate house counsel’s perceptions. The top ranked state, seen as having the fairest legal system in terms of class actions, punitive damages, juries’ predictability and other factors, was Delaware. California ranked No. 45, ahead of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, West Virginia and Mississippi.
While acknowledging that L.A. and California juries can be hard on business interests, Grossman said they have been unfairly criticized for being excessively anti-business.
“I don’t believe a metropolitan Los Angeles jury is any more likely to be unfavorable to business than a metropolitan jury in most parts of the United States,” he said. “But there is a parochial bias toward California and everything Californian by many on the East Coast, and it’s an image that we are constantly striving to live down.”
Rising tide
While L.A. proved no less harsh a venue for business, the DecisionQuest report shows an increasing willingness on the part of jurors to distrust corporate defendants.
The study found that 75 percent of white males, traditionally the most lenient demographic group toward businesses, don’t trust corporations. Also, 85 percent of potential jurors believe large companies hide defects in their products and environmental waste until the government discovers them.
Seventy-three percent of those sampled believe corporate auditors do what their clients tell them, even if it’s dishonest. And 71 percent believe senior executives and managers are the most likely to lie on the witness stand compared with lower-level employees.
“For years, we’ve seen jurors saying they don’t trust corporations, but never anywhere near the large percentage and strength,” Patterson said. “In the past surveys, it would be rare to find the majority of jurors agreeing with anything. The statistics would be 30 percent and 40 percent and 20 percent. Now, we’re finding 80 percent and 70 percent on all the questions, which is a whopping difference.”
Grossman said he has seen a noticeable difference in jurors’ attitudes toward business in the past several months given the media coverage and investigations surrounding corporate misdeeds. Because of that, lawyers are placing an increasing emphasis on asking jurors more specific questions related to the case, he said.
