NCJ Number
162415
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 20 Issue: 2 Dated: (April 1996) Pages: 189-205
Date Published
1996
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This study examined the factors that influence jurors' decisions about compensatory and punitive awards in civil cases.
Abstract
A criticism of the civil jury is that jurors' decisions about damages are capricious and arbitrary. Particularly, critics point to the skyrocketing nature of punitive damage assessments as evidence of a system run amok. This study assessed whether, as the law intends, jurors' decisions about compensation are influenced by the severity of the plaintiff's injury but not by the reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct, and whether assessments of punitive damages are related to the defendant's conduct but not to the plaintiff's injury. Each mock juror read three case summaries from a single cell of a 2 (injury severity: high, low) x 2 (reprehensibility: high, low) design. After reading each summary, the juror assessed compensatory and punitive damage awards and answered questions designed to check the manipulations. Participants were 80 jurors (36 males, 44 females) who had just completed jury service at the district courthouse of a midsized city. Across three cases (personal injury, product liability, and insurance bad faith), mock jurors generally used relevant information and ignored irrelevant factors in their decisions about damages. Decisions about punishment were related to the conduct of the defendant rather than to the extent of the plaintiff's injury, and decisions about compensation were not influenced by the level of care exercised by the defendant. There is evidence that although injury severity had some effect on compensation, its effects may have been indirect. Results are discussed in terms of the extent to which juror decisionmaking comports with legal doctrine. 8 tables and 28 references